I will read anything that Ijeoma Oluo writes after learning so much from So You Want to Talk About Race. So, I jumped at the chance to read an early copy of Mediocre. And, the topic is "history of white male America and a scathing indictment of what it has cost us socially, economically, and politically." What perfect timing! What a time to be alive!

I have had such feelings of rage, and this book gave me an outlet. Is rage reading a thing? If so, this book is pure catharsis. It explores how we got where we are because honestly, nobody wants to be here. I found her exploration of the legacy of the NFL particularly illuminating. Highly recommend this one!

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo explores the history and cultural pervasiveness of white male rage and white male mediocrity. Oluo uses historical events, personal interviews, and her own personal experience to frame an important discussion about our society and the men who shaped and continue to shape it, often to others' and their own detriment.

I'm not the kind of person who had to face a lot of sore truths when reading this book. I didn't need to be convinced that what I was reading was an honest reflection of the world I live in. I imagine it may be more difficult, even impossible, for some of the men this book is about to acknowledge their role in our country's oppressive system. Even so, Oluo presents a convincing, compelling argument that white male supremacy and white male rage have always been destroying, and continue to destroy, our society.

In all, this was a phenomenal read. I learned about history I'd never been taught, learned to look at common aspects of my society differently - I never thought about football that way before! - and I really couldn't put the book down. Like Oluo's other work, this is truly a must-read, and a book I will be adding to my physical collection as soon as it's released.

"It's as if when we continuously pass up the opportunity to listen to those most affected by the shortcomings of our systems, and instead continue to reward those who benefit most from those systems, we end up making no progress at all."

Mediocre is that rare book that overdelivers on what it promises. In our current moment, it's easy to be frustrated by struggling working-class white men who blame people of color for their problems rather than the generations of (mostly white, male, and privileged) politicians who were actually in a position to solve those problems and didn't; by the supposedly progressive white straight men who reveal racism and sexism the moment a movement threatens not to center their own wants and needs; and by the white people who would vote for an incompetent bigot like Trump rather than accept a candidate who recognizes diversity and the need for social justice. All of these groups are discussed in Mediocre, but the book also dives into the history of the United States and makes clear that the profound inequities of our society, which seem to get worse instead of better, are all by design.

From the violent founding of this country to Great Depression recovery plans that prioritized white men over everyone else to housing covenants that prevented Black people from being able to participate in homeownership to the constant assault on voting rights—all of this has been geared toward maintaining a white supremacist patriarchy, and all of it has taken a monumental amount of effort. Oluo makes a convincing and inspiring case that change is possible if we can all (all of us!) look at our own complicity and redirect our efforts. We don't lack the "strength or endurance" to make such change happen, as Oluo puts it. "We just seem to lack the imagination."

I was a fan of Oluo's earlier book So You Want to Talk About Race, but I think this one is even better—more comprehensive, more profound, and more compelling. Her first book has gained some attention this year as Black Lives Matter protests have continued; I hope this new book gets similar attention because it is similarly worthy.

Thank you to Seal Press for this galley!

I don't have writing a full review in me, but despite some unevenness, this is well-worth a read. Oluo has established herself as a vital read on race and power in the United States, and this book is no exception. Even as someone who considers himself relatively well-read, I learned a lot about the history of white power and dominance in the United States, and she pulls together a wide variety of other trends into a compelling synthesis. The share of this book I highlighted serves to emphasize the author's thoughtfulness.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC.

I loved the lenses through which Oluo examines the sociopolitical climate of America. It was a fascinating read, while also being frustrating, anxious, and uncomfortable. I think this will be an excellent book for an anthropology and sociology class, in addition to being a great read for the general public who picks it up.

I would not have believed that I could enjoy another book by Ijeoma Olou as much as I did the excellent So You Want to Talk About Race — and yet Mediocre is so much better.

A political science major in college and an avid reader, I know more than most people about history, including our shameful history with non-white people and women. Yet, Olou revealed so much that I didn’t know. Although this is heresy, I find Mediocre to surpass even Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and rival Carol Anderson’s magnificent White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. I only wish that I could award Mediocre six stars.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley, Perseus Books, Basic Books and Seal Press in exchange for an honest review.

This was a blistering take-down of white men. I expect nothing less than from Ijeoma Oluo, so it met my expectations. It's pretty bleak to see it all laid out like this, but well worth the time.

Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for the digital ARC.

THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING. I loved @ijeomaoluo last book So You Want To Talk About Race that I reviewed earlier this year, so my expectations were high, but she blew them out of the water. Big thank you to @netgalley and @basicbooks for the approval on a #free advanced version.
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I think this is 100% a book worth preordering for when it comes out on 12/1/2020 (the day before my birthday, if you want to get me a gift, just buy yourself this book!!!)
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Through the last 150 years of American history — from the post-reconstruction South and the mythic stories of cowboys in the West, to the present-day controversy over NFL protests and the backlash against the rise of women in politics — Ijeoma Oluo exposes the devastating consequences of white male supremacy on women, people of color, and white men themselves. Mediocre investigates the real costs of this phenomenon in order to imagine a new white male identity, one free from racism and sexism.
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I LEARNED so much from the chapters on the NFL and the history of football and how it was basically built to foster white supremacy from President Roosevelt.
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There is an amazing chapter on America’s ‘bitter dependence’ on Black people that coincided perfectly with my audiobook I’m reading now by Morgan Jerkins. It made me really want to read Isabel Wilkerson’s book on The Great Migration — it’s been one my tbr way too long.
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Her chapter on Women in the Workplace that talked about Reddit’s first female CEO Ellen Pao and all the misogyny and hateful subreddits she had to endure before being forced to resign, while Reddit reaped the rewards of all the amazing changes she made to a failing, incel-dominated space was 🤬🤯.
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She also included chapters on the centering of white men in social justice movements (BernieBros), white mens assault on higher education, and women of color facing attacks in our government because of their challenging of the political (white) status quo.
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This book was excellent, excellent, excellent. Add it to your indie bookstore cart.

I was provided an Advance Reader Copy of Mediocre free of charge in exchange for an honest review through NetGalley.

Ijeoma Oluo is quickly becoming one of my favorite non-fiction authors. Right up there with her sister-in-law, Lindy West. Honestly can I just be a part of their family? When I saw that Ms. Oluo was releasing a new book in December, I was hyped. I read So You Want to Talk About Race earlier this year and found her prose just as refreshing and accessible as her Instagram posts. When I came across it listed as Read Now on NetGalley, I screamed.
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, focuses on the enduring role and impact of the angry white male in American history. The amount of scholarly research that went into this book is clear. Each chapter takes us through a facet of the angry white male, citing historical and contemporary examples, while providing sharp and incisive commentary and analysis. Ms. Oluo also establishes a nonpartisan framework, while also making her values and lived experience clear. Basically, the author read the minds of the angry white males in my life, reveals their thought processes and motivations, connects these to the white supremacist capitalist systems of America, and systematically refutes each point, all while offering us hope and a way forward.
During my read of this book, I found out that the author's house had been burned down in the West coast wildfires. I would highly recommend that you pre-order this book, not only due to its quality content, but also to support Ijeoma Oluo on a personal level.

Another amazing book by Ijeoma Oluo. It was as enlightening as it was infuritating. Oluo’s combined clarity of thought and eloquence with which to voice it is a rare combination. She writes with her frustration and anger obvious, but never sinks to the combative level characteristic of her critics. I knew it would be well-reasoned and thoughtful but the level of research undertaken and presented was surprising. There is so much to be gleaned from this book, one reading is not enough. I marked so many pages I really shouldn’t have bothered. How lucky I feel to live in the Age of Oluo. My anger about all that is happening in the world is visceral and Oluo always brings me to a more cerebral understanding. It makes the stomach aches go away for a bit.

Thank you to NetGalley and Seal Press for the opportunity to read this book.

Once again, Ijeoma Oluo gives us a timely, remarkably well-written book that I've left with more passages highlighted than I can count. The phenomenon of white male mediocrity that leads to white male supremacy is an elephant in the room in the United States, and it is past time that someone address the stunning impact of it over the course of our country's history. It is as pervasive a societal ill as almost any other, and yet no one has been able to articulate its power quite so well as Oluo, at least not for mass consumption. I was furious before the end of the introduction, and then I couldn't stop reading until the last page. I haven't stopped thinking about this book and I won't for some time. I can't wait to pass copies of it along to so many women and men in my life, because we all have so much to learn.

I've enjoyed Ijeoma Oluo's work and this is no different. Oluo brings research and her lived experiences to illustrate the ways in which those in the powerful majority can access success easily and without performing to the extent that others do to gain the same amount of success. In a time when white supremacy is being talked about on a wide scale and the intersectionality of identities can mean the difference between surviving and not surviving the current pandemic, this book brings an argument forward for people to read, digest, and start/continue the conversation.

Oluo has done it again in this engaging study on our nation's failings of propping up the mediocre white male at the expense of efficiency, innovation, and often, downright human decency. Highly readable and well researched, I offer thanks to Oluo for deeply engaging in this topic, as they have noted it is an exhausting and traumatic world to immerse oneself into.

I have just completed my read of Mediocre, only moments ago. And I have the same thought now as I did while reading:

Everyone needs to read this book.

This is the second book I’ve read by Oluo. She is a master of sharing large amounts of information, and thoughts which we are long overdue to consider, in ways that are generous and gracious. As much knowledge as she gives, it never feels overwhelming. It is certainly a “tougher” book to read than “So You Want to Talk About Race,” but I strongly feel both are important to our current conversations.

I received an e-copy of this book via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This book is exactly what we need right now. Oluo’s voice is bold and vital. She explores so many aspects of our country and its relationship with white men, a group that consistently feels entitled and also unwilling to take the risk to move beyond mediocre. This book isn’t an attack on individual white men but on a system that overvalues their input, even when the focus shouldn’t be on them. The section on Bernie Sanders and his bros insightfully interrogates why Sanders attracts such supporters (and it doesn’t make him look good). Oluo writes about how white men as a whole have always held up white supremacy along with the patriarchy. You might think you already know this, but Oluo’s examples will make you think critically about everything our country holds dear, from westerns to football. Read this book!

Okay, this book was FANTASTIC . Nothing that I write here can really do it justice. In Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, Ijeoma Oluo discusses topics as far-ranged as women in the workplace, the origins of American football, past and present politics of the U.S., racism in higher education, and even the centering of white men in the feminist movement in American history. The way that Oluo ties things together throughout the book is honestly amazing. Not one line feels wasted, not one word extraneous. I was surprised by the amount of historical figures that were discussed who I had never even heard of and was also delighted that Oluo touched upon current political figures like Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Throughout this book she discusses how America’s tendency towards white male supremacy has harmed and continues to harm every group in society from women to people of color to the disabled to the LGBTQ+ community and even white men themselves. So much of what she wrote in here was new information for me and the book, as a whole, made for a fascinating read. Racist origins of the SATs, anyone? That is definitely something that I had never even thought of previously.

I have already begun and will continue to recommend this book to friends. Ijeoma Oluo certainly deserves all the recognition she can get for this work. While a very broad range of people could read this and be receptive to the ideas within, it does remain to be seen whether or not this book will actually be able to effectively reach [cis-gendered, straight, able-bodied] white men. I surely hope it does!

Ijeoma Oluo has put together a seemingly endless string of situations where women and people of color have their lives battered and twisted out of shape by white male supremacy. By the end of Mediocre, the feelings of oppression, suppression and anarchic violence become overwhelming. This is life for minorities in America. Generation after generation. It’s essentially an impossible life. The abuse is stunningly widespread, omnipresent and intractable. It is ingrained and seemingly innate. The sole reason? To keep white males in control. It is so pathetic, it can often seem like minorities are just roadkill in the continual battle for and by white men to keep power. And yet, it is clearly wearing on white men, too. It’s complicated. And worth exploring:

Oluo bounces from tale to tale, from Buffalo Bill Cody to Colin Kaepernick, from women in the workplace to Elizabeth Chisholm running for president, from FDR’s programs to higher education’s blackballing. They all fit the premise that white male supremacy is a construct that is so twisted, so fragile and so demanding of its own, it’s a wonder it has managed to survive, let alone thrive. Even Bernie Sanders is faulted for his views; it is that ingrained in someone many see as a solution. It is artificial, bizarre, and damages white males as well as the minorities they feel entitled to rule.

She demonstrates how numerous programs and institutions foist discrimination on minorities. “Works according to design” applies to all kinds of programs such as the GI Bill, by which black soldiers were offered the lowest paying, most dangerous or menial jobs after WWII, and if they didn’t accept them, they would lose all their benefits under the law. Meanwhile, half of white GIs used their benefits to start their own businesses.

Works according to design also applies in finance, mortgages, and scholarships. Despite the highminded announcements, they all had the intention and the effect of keeping out minorities. Works like a charm, and Oluo details the finer points of how they pull it off. For those living in a fluffy cloud of white privilege, it can be a revelation.

Still in WWII mode, women were called upon to fill factory positions while the men went off to war. But government and various institutions spent those months plotting how to get them out of there and back in the home (“where they belong”). Polls asking what should be done with women workers after the war showed results like 48% saying “Fire them.” Women’s magazines told of divorce, infertility and death for those who persisted in factory jobs. Meanwhile 75-80% of the women themselves wanted to keep their jobs after the war. White supremacist men used lower pay, harassment and discrimination to force them out. Only white males should be the family breadwinner. Today, women CEOs face fatal criticism for words and actions that Wall Street praises in white men. Even FDR’s Depression programs forced women to stay home, by allowing only one government salary per family. Naturally, it went to the (white) male.

This kind of constant pressure on minorities is not isolated; Oluo has an endless supply of examples. It makes for unbearable negative forces, and of course, a much tinier rate of progress for the nation, because the white male supremacists demonstrate nothing if not mediocrity.

From Bernie Sanders on down, mediocrity disappoints Oluo. White male supremacists are far from the able geniuses who earn their positions in society by merit in her telling. But they are the only choice on offer. From the boardroom to the backroom, it remains a white supremacist country, where a Congressman like Steve King can wonder out loud when white supremacy suddenly became a bad thing in public life.

Oluo is a powerful writer, direct and to the point, making Mediocre a fast, easy read that penetrates. She likes short, declarative sentences, mostly in the active voice. And she minces no words: “The man who never listens, who doesn’t prepare, who insists on getting his way-this is a man that most of us would not like to work with, live with, or be friends with. And yet, we have, as a society, somehow convinced ourselves that we should be led by incompetent assholes.”

Or: “(Bullying and entitlement) are traits that we tell our children are bad, but when we look at who our society actually rewards, we see that these are the traits we have actively cultivated.“

These internal contradictions are what is holding back the entire nation. From peace, from co-operation and from forward movement.

Collectively, it might not be quite so bad if white male supremacists demonstrated keen judgment, able decision-making, and inspired leadership. But instead, Americans get jerks in power, from the front office to the highest office.

These traits take their toll on the mediocre themselves too. Oluo points out that of the nearly 42,000 suicides in the USA in 2017, 70% were white males. They were (and continue to be) disappointed they haven’t risen faster or further. They are under pressure from their peers, with whom they are in endless competition. Their families are a further source of pressure and depression, leaving essentially nothing for them to appreciate, enjoy or take pride in.

They blame minorities for their lack of success and esteem. As white males, they grew up assuming the corridors of power were open uniquely to them. There wasn’t supposed to be this added competition. It was all supposed to be automatic. Working under a woman or a person of color is the ultimate humiliation in a life of abject failure for a white male supremacist.

And if it isn’t suicide, it is mass murder. White males are the biggest single threat to innocent life in the country. White males are the biggest terrorists in the USA, from the AR-15 mass murderers to police with handguns. From Oluo’s perspective, the bitter disappointment factor is ruining an entire society.

She even has a chapter on American football, burdened with the demands of players for money, recognition, respect, and authority. While two thirds of players are men of color, only white men own teams, black quarterbacks were unknown until recently, and of course the uproar over the national anthem has turned the whole sport into, shall we say, a political football. Or, as Oluo puts it: “When we look at how the sport has embraced violence, undermined workers and exploited people of color – what could be more American than that?”

She portrays the verbal beatings taken by Mmes. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Omar and Pressly as typical of the abuse heaped on competent women. Rather than debate them into submission, white supremacist males call them names, denigrate them, make absurd claims about their work and their lives, and of course, encourage them to go home. But then, they have a great inspiration behind them in the examples set by the president.

This is Oluo’s America, a tight knot of contradictions, violence and gridlock. Viewed from her perspective, it is a wonder the whole thing doesn’t collapse and implode. It’s is certainly not somewhere you would want to raise a family.

Incredibly perhaps, Oluo is not pessimistic. She believes it is possible for all to work and live together, given just a tiny change in attitudes. She does not call for protests, revolution or even legal challenges. Through it all, she has clung to her humanity.

David Wineberg

Ijeoma Oluo is one of my favourite authors. I love her style, her prose, and most of all, the brilliant things she has to say. As with everything Ijeoma Oluo writes, I got a lot out of this book, and I am grateful to her for writing it.

I feel like this book was preaching to the choir a bit which is fine! I already knew a lot of what was in the book but she went into great depth looking into how our country is in the state it is and why white men who are at the top of everything are so angry.

I'd like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. This review is written with complete honesty.

This book is hard to read. It made me angry at how unfairly our society has been built, and it made me feel frustrated with how little progress we have made. That's not the book's fault though. It's society's.

This book was incredibly interesting. I appreciated how the sections were organized, logically building a case that was well researched (The number of sources she cited was staggering) and which was told with moments where the author's voice clearly mirrored my own thoughts.

I found myself frequently taking time to ponder what it was she had said, letting the major points of the argument turn over in my head so I could hoard them for later when I would need that ammo.

This book is highly discussable, and I would imagine that it would be good for a book club to read so that you would have others to talk with.