Limited Mobility

It has been quite a while since my last update due to Thanksgiving Break, but during that time of respite and pie I was able to indulge in reading Tuff. At first it took me a while to truly understand the satirical nature of the novel, but once I did I was in for a lot of laughs, a lot of oh-shit-I-shouldn't-be-laughings, and some introspection regarding the ways in which the Black community is seen as a whole. Our other novels focused on the parts of African American culture that we fail to see, but in this novel Paul Beatty hits the reader over the head right away with the scenes we're familiar with. One of the aspects of his satire that I found most profound was the way space was explored to illuminate the true society of East Harlem.
As opposed to the other novels, the scenes in this book are usually all in the same place- in Tuffy's house, front stoop, or on the block with his friends. It's like the ghetto setting of Cheers- everybody knows your name and doesn't give a rat's ass about you either. You're either in a group or your not, and the same goes for Tuffy. The people on his block might have grown up right next to him, but for one reason or another they are not taken to be worthy of his respect. One of the scenes where this is made most apparent is with the Bonilla brothers, the sure-fire caricatures of do-nothing cops who believe their authority is purely in their badge. As Tuffy quickly discards them and their dog Der Kommisar, it becomes apparent that if you're not in with Tuffy, you're not in at all.
Tuffy and his crew seem isolated from the rest of the greater community, a theme present in most African American fiction, but they don't seem to mind it. Beatty knows that most novels' characters are tired of their situation and want to change their isolated existence in for something of success- for Tuffy's crew there's just no use. When the reader sees characters like Tuffy and Fariq wanting to work inside their own world of pain, it dawns on them that this is no longer a joke- this is reality. Beatty's saying that there could be a thousand LBJ's that want to change the way America treats the poor people of color, but if those stuck in the situation are comfortable in their lives, they'll stay there.
And that's not to say that Beatty wants to start a revolution either- for he also shows the "draft-dodging- dashiki-wearing brown-car-driving leather-trenchcoat-in-the-summer-sportin' stuck-on-stupid-played-out-1970s reject motherfuckers" (109), epitomized in Tuffy's father Clifford. The Black Nationalism shown in these caricatures is something that it satirized to the ridiculous as well, shown to be both stale and out of touch with the real problems of the ghetto. They're stuck not in a neighborhood, but in an era.
What happens between both of these scenarios is that there is limited mobility in their situation- both self-induced and society-induced. Beatty uses space in this way to confirm the things that we know about society already, as well as the isolation of space that all people in Tuffy's world inhabit. Beatty's satire of the archetypes of common black characters brings to light the fact that they're all stuck in a space not meant for them- and the will always have limited mobility in that space.