I was surprised to see racism so noisily insisted on in the first episode of The Walking Dead TV series. Neither the verbal exchange, nor the brawl it sparked, were present in the first volume of the graphic novel.
Merle, a brawny white man in a sleeveless leather vest, is called on to quit his roof-top, zombie-sniping frenzy by T-Dog—an equally stout, Kangol-fitted black man. Merle turns around, jumps 4 feet off his perch and in a parade of suicidal nonchalance, goes…
“Bad enough I got this taco bender on my a** all day, now I gotta take orders from you? I don’t think so bro. That’ll be the day.” After a bit of verbal prodding from T-Dog as to what was meant by “bro” and “the day”, Merle finally spits it out.
“You want to know the day? I’ll tell you the day Mr. Yo!” contorting his fingers and driving them down in a sweep at “Yo!”
“It’s the day I take orders from a Ni***r!”
That scene didn’t just make me uncomfortable for obvious reasons, but it felt ill-placed and forced, all things considered.
Until I realized that the very purpose of this noisy insistence was to warn the viewer. Race wasn’t going to make much sense in the world we’d be stepping into, so let’s address that elephant right here. Sure, it would rear its ugly head on occasion, but its general understatedness wouldn’t be the fault of negligent, naive writers. Its strained presence would be the logical outcome of a world stripped of luxury—the preeminence of race being one such feature that would wilt away into the old-world. And character was going to matter much more than color.
A vivid demonstration of this race-departure is seen in Telltale's The Walking Dead Game. In Season 2, Episode 4, a multiethnic trio of survivors break into a Civil War museum in the middle of a harsh winter. They need blankets to give Rebecca's soon-to-come child a chance at life—a life with a bleak future in a world void of meaning, but a life worthy of a chance all the same.
At the museum, where time and abandonment have frayed the displays, our trio—Clementine, Bonnie and Mike—find a gray soldier's coat. Bonnie, a white woman, rejoices at the discovery without second thought. Mike, black, is hesitant.
Mike: That's great but uh, isn't gray the, y'know uh…?
An awkward pause.
Mike: We can't put Rebecca in a Confederate coat.
Bonnie: Oh I didn't even think about that.
Mike: Guess it's better than nothing though.
That negligible vignette was the first time* I’d thoroughly reflected the lack of race, not only in this cult-classic of a game, but in the zombie apocalypse genre as a whole. I was a little shocked by my dulled awareness for such a long stretch of time, as I’ve been quite vocal about the mishandling of race in many spheres of life—including entertainment. Modern media is trending towards tailoring characters to stereotypes, or at least drawing attention to marginal identity as a way ensuring representation, or forcing pity onto a character. So I thought I’d be able to pick up on when that messaging was absent. But I was too consumed by the human stories to notice.
And in spite of the race-conscious deliberation between Mike and Bonnie, the outcome asserts to us, the viewer, that the structures of offense borne of racial symbolism are as much an artifact of the past as the many other items left in the museum. Indeed, our post-apocalyptic counterparts do struggle with the racist, semiotic renderings of yesteryear, but they ultimately lump race minutia into the old-world pile, and proceed. Not because they don’t care, but because the essence of existence—and the fight to live—consumes them. They care so much more than we, the comfortable, pre-apocalypse observers, can comprehend.
Racism is disturbing because it anchors human dignity to race. It is human dignity that we argue for in the fight against racism. And in their very few words, Mike and Bonnie are able to trace the illogic of race to its root—that the division of race was meant to limit human life. It is that life that they know they must preserve with this thick gray cloth, so why linger on what can be re-symbolized by the switch of a thought?
That gray coat would allow a black child to live.
This disregard of immutable traits doesn’t mean that social discretion in a post-apocalyptic America is tossed out altogether. Instead, it’s the beginning of a more truthful divider—in the apocalypse, we switch from obsessing over fixed, surface characteristics, to a heightened discernment of the character of humans.
Factions and Race
Another reason race ends in the apocalypse is due to group tension—it’s quite high, and rarely so because of the zombie-half of the picture. We become our own worst enemies. The in-built competition for resources, shelter and security so central to the genre make zombie fiction an eternally lucrative interactive media safe-zone.
In other words, group conflict is what keeps zombie fiction alive.
But have you noticed it too? Factions in popular zombie apocalypse games like The Walking Dead, or The Last of Us are rarely** based on race. Even though that would make for a pretty timely Message about oppression and privilege.
Instead, individuals organize themselves by ideology—most commonly philosophies and practices agreed upon by the group as necessary guidelines for survival. The New Frontier faction in The Walking Dead Game was unified by their mutual agreement to use whatever means were necessary to keep group members alive. The Washington Liberation Front from The Last of Us Part II was a strict, militarized evolution of the FEDRA rebellion, the Fireflies. What’s more, in today-speak, either faction—notorious for their inhumanity—was led by a person-of-color.
In zombie fiction, trust must be defined, because the assumption that skin color is a trustworthy indicator of moral status becomes illogical in a survival state—the world-building crumbles fast.
For zombie fiction to be believable, the human urge to survive must make itself manifest in everyone. And that urge can get ugly. If everyone is to be anyone, not everyone will choose the ethical path to survival. Black people will be forced into situations with zero-sum outcomes, and so will white people, and Asian people, and so on. So clustering by survival philosophy, not skin color, is downstream from individual survival in the chaos of the apocalypse.
The Natural Tendency of Common-Humanity
What does this mean for us in the world of the living? What can the death of race in zombie fiction teach us?
For one, it means we really need to reconsider our esteem of race as an immovable ideology. (For more on that, I’d recommend
, or )What does it mean for us in the here and now, if the end of race can be fathomed in apocalyptic fiction without much effort?
And if a mindset that judges character over color can be so naturally assumed, why do we treat proponents of a common-humanity approach to dismantling racism and its effects as naive, and on a quest for the impossible?
Both racelessness and common-humanity, core pieces of second-wave antiracism, are natural next-steps to coexistence, as told by the hypothetic deductions of apocalyptic fiction. Perhaps we should then give these philosophies room to exist and breathe and be lived in?
What Merle Represents
Back to the rooftop brouhaha with Merle and T-Dog. I scratched my head and wondered why this dude, situated at the very edge of a high building, chose to rile up a Walker mob towards the same building he sought refuge in. Why couldn’t he listen to a common-sense plea issued by a black man—why ruminate on the ridiculous, considering the gravity of the bigger picture? I tried to empathize, to comprehend, and I just couldn’t picture it.
Until I realized that he was afraid.
Racism, when embraced by people with power (Merle with a gun, and history at large) can lead to the callous destruction of life. But racism is the sum expression of so much more—fear, abandonment, lack of identity, lack of love. It’s these deficiencies that should alarm us.
It’s these deficiencies that will remain unsatisfied in the human psyche if the world were to descend into chaos.
* Since Larry’s questionable attitude towards Lee in the first couple episodes of season 1, that is.
** The Crawford faction in Telltale’s The Walking Dead Game was pretty fascist.
Thank you for writing this, the passage in particular: "What does it mean for us in the here and now, if the end of race can be fathomed in apocalyptic fiction without much effort?" My hope is that the people if all ideologies who are still clinging to race as defining aspect of a person's character are moving towards the realization that they are the scared asshole irrationally trying to defend the indefensible.
Really enjoyed this essay. And, subbed?