Allen Cooper “Big Al” Character Analysis

Allen Cooper is an ex-gang member, ex-convict, and activist in the national truce movement. Cooper views the public uproar over Rodney King and Reginald Denny as equally distracting from the real structural problems responsible for the racial and class tensions that hurt Los Angeles’s minority communities, the Black community in particular. Cooper is less sympathetic to Denny than the news reporter Judith Tur, reasoning that Denny should have known not to drive his truck into the middle of a riot if he didn’t want trouble. Implicit in Cooper’s lack of sympathy is a tiredness with society extending endless sympathies toward white people, while offering not even a fraction of this sympathy to Black people. Cooper implies that the reason Denny’s beating has caused such a stir is that it’s an exception to the rule because Denny is white, whereas violence against Black people goes largely unnoticed because it’s accepted as par for the course.