RHOBH's Kyle Richards Defends Gwen Stefani Over Controversial Comments
"Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Kyle Richards will tell anyone who asks — in fact, her co-star Crystal Kung Minkoff did ask several times during the show's 12th season — that she takes racism very seriously. At least, Richards takes accusations of racism very seriously. So when pop singer Gwen Stefani (who is an American of Italian and Irish descent) started catching heat for a bizarre interview with Allure in which she repeatedly insisted, "I'm Japanese," why shouldn't Richards decide to weigh in?
It was just in the past few years that Stefani started receiving some belated criticism for her "Harajuku Girls" of the mid-aughts. Essays like this one in Time called Stefani out for cultural appropriation and using Asian women as props, though Stefani has never backed down from the whole "Harajuku Girls" thing. She stirred up the controversy all over again in January 2023, when she was quoted by Allure calling herself Japanese and describing herself, as "a little bit of an Orange County girl, a little bit of a Japanese girl, a little bit of an English girl."
Kyle Richards says everybody just wants to be offended
It appears that Kyle Richards, for one, is primarily upset that people are upset with Gwen Stefani at all. On an E! News Instagram post about the story, Richards commented, "Everyone can't wait to be offended by something." Why Richards didn't decide to just sit this one out is a question only she can answer, but it is interesting considering the context. For one thing, one of Richards' biggest beefs on Season 12 of "RHOBH" was with Crystal Minkoff, who she called a "dramatic millennial" after Minkoff once described a racially insensitive conversation with Sutton Stracke as "dark," (via Page Six).
For another, doesn't Richards remember her co-star Lisa Rinna going on a full-blown apology tour after she said in an Instagram story, "We fight on our show if we fight with Garcelle we are all of a sudden called racist," per Us Weekly.
No one is calling Richards racist, for what it's worth, only that she maybe isn't the right person to be leading this convo.