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Gang Representation in Sons of Anarchy
Sons of Anarchy is an American television drama created by Kurt Sutter that airs on FX network. The drama series, also known by its acronym SOA or SAMCRO, is centered around the culture of motorcycle gangs and includes multiple gangs with differentiated racial makeups. The series is set in current-day California in a fictional town called Charming. The town is modeled as a small-town community which has limited government interference normally and lenient authorities. The first season was aired in 2008 and followed the lives of motorcycle gang members in the caucasian gang, called the Sons of Anarchy. Other gangs included in the series were a black gang, called the one-niners, and a
The show plays this racism as a fact of life that the gang cannot escape, control or overcome. It hides behind trying to make the racism humorous like
Clays line instead of showing it show racism how it actually exists, ugly and disturbing.

After thinking back on Juices plot point, which originally had me interested in studying and discussing this show for my study, I went back to re-watch the first season. I decided to start with the first season because it was Sutter’s first attempt at depicting the gangs and it would not be fresh in my mind since I had not seen it since last summer when I binge-watched all the seasons again. This time instead of just taking in the show for entertainment value I set up some guidelines for my viewing. I decided that I would make a table which would include the three most prominent gangs: Mayans, Sons of Anarchy, and One-niners. Each column would represent one of the gangs and the rows would be the type of crimes committed on the show. Whenever a gang was involved in any crime I would mark down which category it was in and then what response it garnered from the community and the authorities. These groups seemed to me most likely to be unbiased when it came to criminal activity. Neither necessarily should have any stake in the violence besides wanting it to be eradicated. After collecting this information I would have a breakdown of each gang: how many