by Mateo Stefano

Created on: April 05, 2011   Last Updated: April 20, 2011

Describing all bikers as outlaws is just as ridiculous as describing all Southerners as ignorant and inbred; it’s all Hollywood fiction!  It’s not just fiction, it down right offensive to be stereotyped this way and borderline raciest.  Yes, I pulled the race-card because the love of the freedom of riding a motorcycle is something that is in your blood!

 In 1953 Hollywood produced the movie called, “The Wild One” where a young Marlon Brando played an outlaw biker and the role, the image, may have influenced bikers back thirty or forty years ago but these days the majority of bikers have turned that image 180 degrees around.  Now bikers are Christians on Harley’s or volunteers for charitable organizations like Toys for Tots.

 They are doctors and lawyers; bikers are professionals these days who are living the dream too “live to ride.” In reality we hear and see these good things about bikers way more today, then hearing or seeing police raids and arrests on outlaw biker gangs.

 On the Hell’s Angels MC World web page:  www.hells-angels.com their motto is, WHEN WE DO RIGHT NOBODY REMEMBERS WHEN WE DO WRONG NOBODY FORGETS so we can assume that they are sore about the outlaw description still carried by the general public against them, but dose it have to stay this way?

 For that matter do we have to keep insulting the South with movies about incestuous relationships?  Freedom of Speech protects the moviemakers within their rights as American’s to continue making money off of sensationalism, exaggeration and of course, fiction.  So the outlaw description of bikers is more then likely to continue being the general consensus but it is not justified.

 Stereotyping and profiling are not going to go away.  If you are Arabic, you are going to be shook-down at the airport as a possible terrorist.  If you are female, you are going to be offered less money for doing the same job that a man makes more money for.  And if you are black, you are going to be suspected when crimes take place.

 We can not justify any of it but that’s just the way it is.  Life is not fair.  Some of us see bikers today as men in a midlife crisis who have been pushed around all their lives for so long that now, they can feel a little bit like the real bad-boys when they put on all black leather chaps, boots and a jacket with a club patch on it and catch the eyes of everyone near them being leery of the myth.

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