How Sons of Anarchy Got Racism Right

Television is really comfortable with showing unrepentant racists in the roles of villians; and playing racism for laughs or shockvalue. But what we don’t normally see in pop culture is the urge toward showing full characters. Including the racist bits.

I’ve been following Sons of Anarchy since the beginning of Season 3, and I was initally going to write about how the show treats whiteness. The world of Sons is almost an unauthorized form of whiteness that is rarely depicted without derision – defiantly lower class, quasi-ethnic, and trapped in the same kinds of systems that count as pathology in communities of color, but get the “trash” label when the conversation shifts to whites in the same situation.

However, that piece was put on hold because the subplot on this season is around a character named Juice Ortiz – and the problems that arise between his identity and the rules of the club.

[SPOILERS for the entire Juice story arc as well as other parts of the series ahead. This is your one and only warning.]

Now, the Sons seemed fairly unconcerned with racism. They went to war with a white supremacist crew, and have made alliances with local black and Latino bike gangs, though with mixed results. The older members are a bit more inclined toward racism, the younger ones a bit less so, but it really depends on the individual. In an early meeting with the new Sheriff, Juice’s mixed race background and black father are put on the table as bargaining chips: If Juice doesn’t cooperate, the Sheriff informs the club – which just so happens has a bylaw banning black members. Panicked, Juice is coerced by the Sheriff to steal a sample of the cocaine, attempts to do so, but falls asleep and doesn’t return the sample before counting. Things get hectic, and Juice ends up killing another member of the club to keep his secret. Increasingly weighed down by the increasing demands, his actions, and the secret, Juice attempts to commit suicide, leading fellow member Chibs to start looking after him. At one point, he tentatively asks about the “no blacks rule” to Chibs, another member of the club, who explains that while he didn’t personally agree, the rules were the rules, and if they stopped following the rules, everything would fall apart.

This part, I loved, because it makes the point about racism that we’ve been making all along – that it isn’t just hooded white supremacists that practice racism. Chibs, by failing to challenge an older racist rule, assisted in shaking Juice’s faith in his club, and isolated him even further, driving him deeper into the devious machinations of Lincoln Potter. In his moment of need, Juice doesn’t hear support. But neither Chibs does actively defend racism. Instead, he does so passively – he essentially slides neutral, and as Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” For some people, Chibs’ position may have been unclear – how can he allow racism to continue, but still care about Juice? But that’s easy. Much of racism exists in the abstract – those people over there, not these good people you know, who are the exception. So, of course Chibs could uphold the club’s racist rules – it didn’t affect him. And of course he could then tell Juice not to worry – he’s not one of those abstract people. But notice, Chibs is careful with the language. After Juice’s confession, he assures him things will be alright – not because that rule was wrong and it was racist, or that he had faith that the rest of the Sons are so far removed from racism that they won’t mind, but because Juice’s birth certificate says “Latino.”

The anti-black rule still stands, unchallenged. And while Chibs may think it’s what’s in your heart that counts (as long as you aren’t black on your birth certificate), that doesn’t mean the rest of the club will agree.

Over at Kurt Sutter’s blog, he explains the seed for the story line:

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