She takes us through periods such as the ‘wild’ west and the Great Depression, tracing the roots of many current societal and systemic issues. Mediocre works systematically through historical, statistical, and scientific context for Oluo’s arguments, bringing them to life in anecdotal and lived experience. They also hurt people, and they compromise the integrity of our movements.” “When that true commitment to equality isn't there, when white men waltz into social justice movements with their privilege unchecked and expect to feel rewarded and comfortable at all times, they slow us down. I know I am not alone. And how much more frustrating and harmful, then, for those whose disability, gender, sexuality, and/or skin colour places them elsewhere on that totem pole? I am pretty high up on the privilege totem pole, but oh, how often I’ve found myself talked down to, talked over, had my contributions relayed back to me as if they were the straight white man’s idea in the first place. and everything in our society is centred around preserving white male power regardless of skill or talent.”Īnd my word but do I feel this in my bones.

What I’m saying is that white male mediocrity is a baseline. I do not believe that any race or gender is predisposed to mediocrity. (Dec.Oluo says “I am not arguing that every white man is mediocre.

Skewering political pundits who contend that white men’s needs still must be catered to in an increasingly diverse country, Oluo asks, “If white men are finding that the overwhelmingly white-male-controlled system isn’t meeting their needs, how did we end up being the problem?” Erudite yet accessible, grounded in careful research as well as Oluo’s personal experiences of racism and misogyny, this is an essential reckoning with race, sex, and power in America. Surveying American history through the lens of white male entitlement, Oluo reexamines the actions and legacies of Wild West performer Buffalo Bill Cody, early–20th century “socialist feminists” Floyd Dell and Max Eastman, and segregationist NFL team owner George P. to “the brink of social and political disaster” in the Trump era, Oluo writes, and led to the devaluing of a college education, the promotion of leadership styles that hurt businesses, and the marginalization of policy issues that primarily affect communities of color, including police brutality and gerrymandering. Freelance writer Oluo ( So You Want to Talk About Race) contends in this incisive treatise that American society revolves around “preserving white male power regardless of white male skill or talent.” This privileging of white male mediocrity has brought the U.S.

White male mediocrity book