Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992

This theme is apparent from the book’s Prologue and is especially prevalent in the opening section. Throughout the play, we meet numerous victims and witnesses, both first and secondhand, of race-based police brutality. As the actor Jason Sanford notes, “I’m sure I’m seen by the police totally different than a black man” (23), while Senator Bill Bradley states that the only offense committed by a former Harvard Law colleague was to have been simultaneously “in the wrong neighborhood and black” (218). African-American witnesses are blunter: Theresa Allison knows, with certitude, that “They’ve done it to my kid, they’ll do it to your kid. It’s the color, because we’re Black” (38). Paul Parker sees that “if it’s a black-on-black crime […] they don’t have no problem with that. But let it be a white victim, [and] oh…” (171).

From the ghetto conditions noted by “Big Al” to the institutionalized racism certified by the McCone and Kerner Commissions of the 1960sto the assertion by the anonymous Hollywood agent that the system is unequal, we can be certain that some large forces are at work to keep racial discrimination and race-based brutality in place. Rudy Salas and Theresa Allison, the anonymous juror (“Your Heads in Shame”) and the anonymous Hollywood agent (“Godzilla”) all speak knowingly of “the system” which routinely turns citizens into pawns and victims.