Continued...
Bob. Bob was pretty sad, too. While likeable, one of the first things he does is exhibit his weakness, getting someone killed because he was fooling around with a bottle of liquor on a supply run. They were going to get crucial medications for sick members of their group. Yep, he’s an alcoholic and displays a mental fragility that disgusted me. This resulted in the death of Zach, and caused a confrontation with Daryl, the fan-favorite hero that survives everything. Bob almost pulls his sidearm to prevent Daryl from throwing the liquor away.
Later in the series, Bob is dumb enough to walk outside alone, at night, knowing the group has enemies. He was abducted by people from Terminus, who amputated his leg and ate it. He was later put down by Tyreese.
Father Gabriel. Father Gabriel was the most disgusting example of the emasculation of black male characters in the whole series. What a sniveling coward. First, he gets his whole congregation killed by refusing to let them in the church. Then after being saved by Rick and his crew, Carl attempts to teach the hapless black man how to use a weapon. Later, Father Gabriel sneaks out and runs to a school, where dozens of walkers are trapped. Seeing a live human, the walkers burst out of the locked doors and chase the idiotic priest back to the church. He is almost killed, but Michonne and Carl save his life and they all flee the property.
After the whole group gets to Alexandria, one of the first thing Father Gabriel does is betray Rick’s group to Deanna, the town leader. Maggie overhears Gabriel telling her that Rick is a killer and those people can’t be trusted and blah, blah, blah. More blatant cowardice.
Later, we are expected to believe that Gabriel has become brave when he suddenly becomes a warrior, but I suspect this is in response to the charges that the franchise does nothing but casts black males in a cowardly and traitorous light. Too late. It was completely unbelievable.
Shumpert. Shumpert was one of The Governor’s henchmen. He never said much, but he was a total yes-man. He was good with a bow and arrow. We learn later that, once again, the black man couldn’t handle the circumstances and pretty much got himself killed, because he cracked. They all cracked.
Go ahead, call me a liar. Call me a race-baiting zealot. But, as I said at the beginning, all of these episodes have already aired. You can’t deny it. But to close, let’s go back to Tyreese’s death. Here is a guy that has lived in this total wasteland of a world for years, and he fails to clear the house. While staring at a picture on the wall, a child-sized walker bites him on his arm.
After being bitten, Tyreese has hallucinations, in which a bunch of dead white characters remind him that he is, in fact, a sissy that is not cut out to handle the harsh conditions of this world. One of those characters is Martin, the guy that told him he was doomed long before Tyreese actually was. Lizzie and Mika also appear, letting Tyreese off the hook for being a weakling. This was particularly telling. This is the moment the writers actually tell you that these black men cannot handle the situation. They are all fragile, they will all die.
And yet, Carl, a tiny little white kid, has survived two gunshot wounds; one to the torso, one to the face. He walks calmly through crowds of walkers, covered in walker guts. He gets trapped in a bedroom with a walker, and lives. He has three walkers fall over on top of him, all alone. And yet, he survives.
Carol was a domestic violence victim. She was timid and beaten-down, both emotionally and physically. But she adapts after her abuser is dead, and becomes one of the few characters that understands her existence in this new and brutal world. And we don’t have a single black male character that can do this, and it is illustrated to us that they simply cannot.
There are black female characters that are ride-or-die. Michonne and Sasha are both beautiful and tough as nails. They also both have white male boyfriends. What’s the relevance? Tyreese had a white girlfriend, Karen, who was killed immediately by Carol. Heath, a black male character who is actually still alive, was Denise’s boyfriend in the comics. In the show, the writers made Denise gay, instead of putting her with Heath. Huh? So the females, we can keep them, but all the men have to be trash; cowardly, fragile, traitorous, or some combination of the three.
And sometimes, they throw you a bone, and have somebody you know as a coward do something useful. It’s bullshit. Cowards don’t suddenly become useful. It never happens in real life, and it shouldn’t happen in media productions.
I always make it so people will have to literally be crazy or in complete denial to debate with me. You can’t debate this. You can have your own opinion, but you can’t have your own facts. I just listed every major black male character that has been featured on the show, and I didn’t tell a single lie.
