Significance of Manny’s Range Rover

Manny’s Range Rover represents the inadequacy of respectability politics. The Rivers family has succeeded within a hostile society, amassing the wealth for private schools and expensive cars. Despite their demonstrated ability to meet the goals of American society, they still face barriers and slurs for the color of their skin. Manny’s friends use his Range Rover as a symbol in conversation of his distance from other black people. Instead of making him one of them, they isolate him from everyone. The inadequacy of wealth and societal success becomes even clearer when Manny is shot. He may have driven a Range Rover, with all its subtext about privilege and plenty, but Tison still sees him as a troublesome young black man who should be shot rather than listened to. The Range Rover’s ostentatious display of wealth proves impotent in the face of racism and prejudice.