After the zombie apocalypse, would you accept refuge with a settlement of competent racists?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So you’re living in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by zombies, and things are going bad for you. (Assume they’re Walking Dead type revenants, if you care about such things.) The city or town you live in fell early on, and for a few months now you (along with your spouse and kids, if you have one) have been wandering with a small group–say half a dozen, not counting you and your family. You knew none of the group before joining them.

One day, due to the fault of no one but God, your group gets surrounded by a zombie herd. Just when the situation seems hopeless, y’all get rescued by a team of extremely competent zombie fighters, who, after slaughtering the revenant cannibals, offer to take your group to their shelter and provide food and medical care. You’re wary, but your group is in such bad shape, there’s no other option.

So off to the shelter you go. At first, second, and third glance it is everything you could hope full: well-built, well-organized, with sturdy walls, rational security measures, and a ton of resources. Your rescuers doctor your wounded, give food and clothing and ammo, and don’t try to kill, rape, or enslave anyone. It’s exactly the sort of refuge you’ve been dreaming of.

But of course there’s a problem. After everyone in your group is ambulatory, the refuge’s ruling council tells you that most of y’all will have to leave. That doesn’t include your or your family, and it’s not because of anything anyone has done. The thing is, however superficially nice the people here are, they don’t believe in mixing of the races. You and your family are the right skin tone, so y’all are in like flynn – but the rest of your original group descends from the wrong ancestors, so they’ll have to go. The refuge’s forces outnumber your original group by far, far too great a margin to even consider fighting.

Do you stay in the refuge with the racists, or go back out in the wild?

2

I’d join, but would consider leaving later on if things improved to make a good exit feasible.

3

I’d leave. It wouldn’t be that hard to build a similar refuge without the racism. If they’re not violently racist, maybe we could build two settlements that engage in mutual trade or something.

4

I’m out. I used to hang out with some people who were (among other things) unashamedly racist, and survival or not, that shit gets old real fast.

5

I’d kill all the racists and steal their guns.

Win-win.

6

You are not a superhero in this scenario. They just saved YOUR ass, not the other way around.

7

If it was just me and my family, I might settle for a little while at least. I might consider myself to have a responsibility to my family - after all, it is safe, and we are taken care of, and there is security - it would be foolish and downright stupid to leave a safe haven and force my family to leave it too, over some moral principles.

However, I also have other people in my group, and I like to think I’d feel a strong sense of responsibility to them, too. So I’d leave.

All that being said, I wonder what kind of group would allow me (E.Indian) and my “family”, which is my SO (Chinese descent) but somehow be racist to others? An anti-white group?

8

Would not stay.

9

I knew you’d be a problem. :smiley: You and everyone else in an “interracial” relationship. (“Interracial” in quotes because, officially, I feel the whole concept of race to be bullshit.) But yes, in your case the competent racists would have to consider all Asians (Chinese, Thais, Indians, et cetera) the same race but be opposed to blacks, Europeans, et cetera, just as in my case they’d have to be black separatists.

10

I am always a problem. :stuck_out_tongue:

ETA: There are anti-white Indian racists. And Chinese ones, too. But for them to get along is a stretch.

11

It’s not even the racism that bothers me so much as the fact that the new group is so eager to send people outside for flimsy reasons. What are the odds that they send me packing a month from now because I didn’t polish my shoes right, or I ate dessert with my salad fork? Or they decide I’m a mixed breed after all when they see that my little toes have the wrong shape?

There’s no real security in a community like that except to be in charge. They just saved me, so I’m a long way from being in charge.

That said… I would also have to seriously assess my odds of survival inside and out. In the apocalypse, there are worse things than racists out there. I might decide that it would be better to leave after a year or two; maybe the zombie horde will have dispersed by then. Or maybe the United States will get back together and the racists will lose power that way. I’m just not going to be eaten by zombies to make a philosophical point.

12

Either they are all very near-sighted, since they don’t notice that my kids are Asian and I am not, or whites and Asians are OK.

If they are near-sighted, I stay and take over because they can’t see me stealing all their ammunition. If whites and Asians are OK, then I stay - my daughter is going to become Empress of any post-apocalyptic world in short order anyway, and then at last People Will Do What She Says and all will be well.

The other members of my group can hang around nearby in the woods for a while, while she schemes her coup, and then come back and be her obedient slaves like the rest of us.

Regards,
Shodan

13

Who says I’m not?

Geeze, you’re the one who postulated the zombie fuckin apocalypse! Why can’t I be Michael Westen?

Seriously, one way or the other I’m devoting my remaining days ending those fuckers who decide to turn a “natural” disaster into a whites only party. They gotta come out of their compound sometime, and I’m taking them out. Or letting the zombies in.

14

I’d think it would be more useful in that kind of situation to enslave the people they didn’t like, rather than just turn people out. Field hands, ditch diggers, etc… will definitely be useful in that situation, and especially if they’re expendable, i.e. the zombie horde comes a running, the guards can high-tail it inside the walls and let the slaves distract the zombies.

Not that I’m advocating slavery, but rather that I bet that exile isn’t the way I think things would go down.

15

For the same reason you can’t have a Green Lantern ring, or the power to transform into Colossus, or have the starship Enterprise in orbit. If you don’t genuinely need help, there’s no conflict.

16

This is really easy. Lots and lots of Asians are racist against blacks. I can see them having a “no blacks” policy.

17

If these people are otherwise nice, and they aren’t opposed to sharing some food and supplies, then there’s no reason they couldn’t help build another refuge. Win win.

18

They can be X-race separatists without being slavers, you know. Same way a man can be an abusive husband without being a pedophile, or a thief without being a murderer, or a Star Wars fan without being a virgin.

19

Ah, a case of “don’t fight the hypothetical”, eh?

But it’s such an impossible hypothetical. Polite racists, who save someone, only to turn them out into the cold cold zombieland afterwards? Rather than the more likely case of them not even offering to help in the first place? And everyone in the compound is exactly of the same mindset? No dissent within? No chance for a negotiated arrangement, a changing of minds?

Then, per your limited hypothetical, I would not stay.

I’ll bow out of any further discussion, because even in a world undergoing a zombie apocalypse, your scenario is unrealistic.

20

I’d stay. Eliminating racism is nice, but there’s no way it’s a more important concern than starving to death, getting shot or getting devoured by zombies. My survival is more important than my political goals or social values.