Testimonial Justice Analysis

Testimonial injustice as simply put is “a lack of fairness or justice” in “a formal statement testifying to someone's character and qualifications”. To add more depth to the definition, Miranda Fricker, an English philosopher in her article Testimonial injustice dwells in the explanation of this expression using several cases of social and power identity. Similarly, Anna Deavere Smith, an American actress, playwright and professor also resonates with testimonial injustice through the voices of her interviewees who experienced the riots in her play Twilight. Therefore, this paper consists of determining whether Fricker and Smith agree on the definition of “testimonial injustice”? and If so, what evidence from their writings support the claim.

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is a one-woman written play and originally performed by Anna Deavere Smith about the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Starting in 1991, Rodney King is severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers, a scene recorded and visualized by millions of Americans. However, the officers were acquitted the following year since they were only enforcing the law as excused by the jury leading to the beginning of the riots. After 200 hundred interviews of people connected to the riot, their testimonies are played together to make an astounding representation of the turmoil of emotions this case rose. Social identity was indeed at the core of these testimonial injustices portrayed in the play by the many brutal identity power events which were represented in Ms. Smith's piece in addition to King’s case: the attack on the truck driver Reginald Denny by rioters, shockingly videotaped; the shooting of Latasha Harlins a 15-year old girl by a Korean grocer who believed the girl was a thief; and the second trial of the Los Angeles police officers all related to the amalgam of racial issues among black, white, Asian and Mexican Americans in Los Angeles. Indeed, race and racial prejudice were big themes of twilight where the consequences of the injustices were persistent and systematically harmed the people with less societal