Forget The Zombies: “The Walking Dead” Is Infested With White Supremacy, Sexism & Magical Negros

Then there are the white women of the camp. Which one? Any of them. Traditional genders roles have been standard issue throughout the whole series where women are there exclusively to cook, do laundry, and screw while the men comb the earth, scrounging for supplies and killing zombies, like good caveman hunters. Even with “Andrea,” the blonde-haired, blue-eyed former attorney, who took exception to the traditional roles instead choosing to step down from the pedestal and kill zombies like the boys. Like a infant child learning to walk, Andrea bumbled her way through her independence, making plenty of poor (and sometimes irrational) decisions including hooking up with a bad guy with a nice smile, who is also another white male leader and antagonist of the story. Despite being strong, resilient and insightful, we are told that Andrea is just not smart enough to make it with her own and regularly has to be saved: first by Shane; then by Michonne and then by the Governor. In the final few episodes, Andrea found herself recaptured and literally duct taped and bounded back to her pedestal by the bad guy with a nice smile boyfriend. Her fate for her was sealed on Sunday night when she was bitten in the neck by a zombie called Milton, who used to be the quintessential nice guy of the Woodbury camp. Despite her noble efforts of try to claim some independence for herself, Andrea just wasn’t smart enough to hack it out in the real world all alone, which is evident by her inability to free herself from her pedestal in time to keep from becoming zombie food – even though she had a pair of pliers.

Yet as white women are supposed to abide by those traditional roles of womanhood – or risk the consequences (also see Rick’s dead wife Lori) there’s “Michonne,” the dreadlocked, dark-skinned and mean-mugging sister with a sword, is supposed to stay far away from it – perhaps not to taint it. In addition to playing magical Negress caretaker to a package-matized Andrea, who eventually turned on her, Michonne spent most of the season being the object of Rick’s distrust. This after leading Rick and his camp on a number of runs including one through Woodbury to save Maggie and Glenn, and assisting them when they get trapped by a horde of zombies. When she was not being humiliated by Rick and then finally his son Carl, Michonne spent the majority of this season sneaking around the outskirts of prison sneaking around like a damn stray alley cat. She stays after Rick threatens her. She stays after the Carl the boy disrespects her and undermines her authority as a babysitter. And she stays after several of the camp consider trading her for peace with Woodbury. If there is any character on the series more capable of leading a team through the dead terrains of backwoods zombie-infested Georgia you would certainly think it could be a person, who survived on her own using nothing but a sword and two zombies on a leash. Instead she begs for acceptance into Rick’s world, opting to give away her power to Rick, who uses it at his own discretion and whim. But why?

As a leader, Rick is pretty inconsistent. First off, he came (by way of awakening from a coma) into the zombie apocalypse already behind the curve, thus the team suffered greatly while having to wait until Rick got with the program. He killed Shane, the only other alpha white male in the camp. And he spent the majority of the third season dealing with severe paranoid delusions. And in a matter of three seasons, he can’t even lead the group out of the state of Georgia. And most times, he is very domineering and verbally abusive to his campers.  Yet all of these characters around him take shelter under his guidance for no reason that makes logical sense. Granted, this is a television show based upon a fictional zombie apocalypse we are discussing here. But if we can dream up the dead rising from their graves then certainly we can envision a world where historically marginalized people are not just two-dimensional immaterial people in the white man’s world.