Los Angeles, California – As Matt James's controversy-ridden season of The Bachelor has come to an end, former contestants on the show are raising their voices about mistreatment and racial bias on and off-camera. Their words have brought to light a long history of racial issues.

The latest season of The Bachelor was supposed to be a pivotal one for the show. For the first time in history, a Black man was the lead.

Unfortunately, this landmark moment was soon overshadowed by contestant Rachael Kirkconnell's history of attending plantation-themed frat parties.

Soon, other former contestants began to speak out about the racial prejudice they had experienced on the show, highlighting deeply embedded problems.

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Jubilee Sharpe, who appeared in season 19, told BuzzFeed News how uncomfortable and out of place she felt on the show.

Rather than being kept around due to a connection with that season's Bachelor, Ben Higgins, she believes it was only to make the show look less racist, saying "I'm very intuitive. I'm like, 'this man is not into me. Why am I still here?'"

She admitted that after watching the show when it aired, a new kind of pain took over.

It turned out the women Sharpe had spent weeks with, and who had always been nice to her face, had actually been talking smack behind her back. The most offensive suggestion was that she would never be able to "fit in" with other soccer moms.

"I felt like an exotic zoo animal. I wasn’t like all the other animals in the zoo, so people who would ooh and aah at me" Sharpe said.

The 12th season of the show saw a Black contestant make it further than any up until that point.

It was the week before hometowns, and Marshana Ritchie told BuzzFeed news that the other women pressed her with racist questions, asking if she even had a father, or if she had a baby at home.

After winning one-on-one dates over the large cast of white women, Ritchie said she felt like the other contestants resented her for taking away something – or rather someone – that they were entitled to.

Because the entire production crew was white, Ritchie never felt comfortable confiding in anyone. She felt isolated and "an immense sense of pressure to behave well... and not play into stereotypes"

It wasn't just about embarrassing herself on national television. She said that she was constantly worried about casting a bad light on her race as a whole. Going forward, Ritchie believes it's not only education that's needed, it's representation both in front of and behind the camera.

If there was a POC on the production team, she thinks her time on the show would've been easier.

Fast-forward to Matt James's season and the first Black male to take the lead role. Not only did racial issues come to light about a current contestant, but some believe the production and editing of the show cast a negative light.

Former contestant and current TV personality Rachel Lindsay shared her distaste for how the show portrayed the estranged relationship between Matt James and his estranged father.

In an episode of the Bachelor Party podcast, Lindsay said "What's the one thing we know about [Matt's] dad? That he wasn't around. That's all we know which, if you know anything about stereotypes that are assigned to particular races – here, the Black race – you know that absentee fathers is a stereotype."

Even James himself disagreed with how the show depicted his relationship with his father, and the negative portrayal of Black families it created, tweeting, "I just wanted to say that too often, we see dangerous stereotypes and negative depictions of Black fathers in media. And they have consequences when presented without context."

Producers of The Bachelor have said they intend to add POC to their production crew in the coming seasons.

Chris Harrison, who was caught up in his own controversy, will continue to educate himself, while two former Bachelorette leads, Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe, will take over hosting duties for the upcoming seasons.