‘Sons of Anarchy’ Creator Kurt Sutter Reveals Jax’s Thoughts on Club’s ‘Racial Divide’

Kurt Sutter has once again been answering fans’ questions about Sons of Anarchy over social media, and one of the latest addresses a largely unspoken issue that runs deep within the fictional motorcycle club. On July 7, the SoA creator responded to one viewer’s question regarding the whites-only rule within the club itself, and how it impacted Jax (Charlie Hunnam) as well as Juice (Theo Rossi) throughout the show’s run.

“I’ve always said that Jax Teller’s tragic flaw was his depth of character,” Sutter wrote. “He felt to much and thought too deeply. I think, for Jax, the racial divide was something that always seemed antithetical to the concept of brotherhood. It’s not what his father would have wanted. But yes, I think Juice’s death made it personal for Jax. He wanted that change to be his legacy.”

The issue with Juice started back in Season 4 when federal agents were pressuring him to snitch on the club in exchange for them withholding the bombshell information that his father was black, which would have led to his expulsion from SAMCRO. In the series finale, the unwritten rule is thrown out by Jax, and the club patches over its first Black member, T.O. Cross (Michael Beach), a club ally and former president of the Grim Bastards.

The rule itself can be traced back to real-life biker gangs like the Hell’s Angels, who used to refused to induct any non-white male or any woman at all. As a result, other ethnic groups began forming their own organizations, which is reflected by the Mayans in SoA, as well as their own eponymous sequel series, Mayans M.C.

More recently, Sutter also addressed the long-standing sexual tension between Tig (Kim Coates) and Gemma (Katey Sagal), the wife of one-time club president Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman). When asked about it, Sutter answered with his usual candid sense of humor, which isn’t unusual when talking about Tig and his various… eccentricities. “We’re pretty sure there were a few multi-partnered events with Clay, Gemma, Tig, Croweaters and the occasional corpse,” Sutter wrote, adding “it is not cool to wet-bump another man’s old lady.”