This is an insightful critique of the culture of white mediocrity in workplaces and everywhere else. Bringing together research from higher ed, sports, tech and other sectors, Ijeoma Oluo builds a compelling narrative of how the potential of POC but esp WOC is constrained and undermined by this toxic elevation of white men. The book is very accessible and grounded in academic research which adds heft to its premise. Incredible read!

I enjoyed this book as much as you can enjoy a book about this depressing topic. One of the more interesting things Oluo mentioned was how when women take over Fortune 500 companies or whatever, those companies are already frequently in trouble (from the actions of white men) and then when they aren't able to undo all the damage, it's looked on as a failure by women. This book is really insightful and I recommend reading it with the expectation it will leave you a little less optimistic about everything.

This one was just okay. Not my favorite, but definitely an interesting read. The writing felt a little off.

Mediocre feels like a bit of a misnomer here, because this book is fantastic. I received an ARC of this before it was first published, and then was gifted a finished copy recently when it came out in paperback. When I picked it up, I was wondering why I hadn't already read it. And then I started it and immediately answered my own question as I simultaneously understood how politically-oriented this book is, and remembered the anxiety that ruled my life in the fall of 2020. I'm glad I picked this up now that I'm in a place to fully absorb and engage with it.

Mediocre is a thoroughly researched discussion of this history of white male supremacy in The United States over the last 150 years, and helped to answer a lot of questions about things that seem somewhat illogical about American society. Oluo helped me to reframe a lot of things I already think a lot about, and taught me about facts and concepts I had no prior knowledge of.

I listened to the audiobook version, which Oluo narrates, and I highly recommend her narration. This is among my top nonfiction reads of 2021.

Based on a quote encouraging the rest of us to "have the confidence of a mediocre white man", this book of essays lays out the author's case that the dominant narrative of the US is based on white males. It is not a male-bashing book, and her arguments are laid out in a very readable method while using facts and figures (and references).

One section talks about a family member who has told a story enough to believe it is true, and I was stunned. If I had read this a few years ago, I might have been skeptical. However, I had an encounter with a close family member last year (not even a political topic) wherein she has made up this thing that she thinks happened (and she's mad at me about), when it's not even possible.

This book has some important ideas and inspires me to look further into some of the resources.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to review this book. This is a necessary read.

I loved her other book, and the premise with this but despite trying to read multiple times, I just couldn't engage with this material.

As such i haven't shared my review publically, as I don't think it's fair!

Thanks for the ARC copy.

What a challenging yet much needed read for all of America. Guaranteed to be similar, yet different than books you may have read about race, class, and gender. This book pulls no punches, is a difficult read at times, but is clear in its messaging that systems set-up to show preferential treatment to certain racial and gender populations is indeed, and has, taken place in America for years. I challenge you, the person reading this review, to read this book from a non-biased and non-judgmental space and I have no doubt that you will be better for it. Thank you to NetGalley and Seal Press for providing such an honest and challenging book in exchange for an honest review.

Review Mediocre

Ijeoma Oluo has given herself the difficult task of describing the long history and impact of White male mediocrity/supremacy in the US. Difficult not because it’s a new topic or hard to prove but rather because pointing out the glaringly obvious is going to attract a lot of vitriol and abuse. She does in fact talk about other toxic feedback she has received for her previous work and from the reviews on GR and Amazon – just a quick glance is enough – one can imagine what kind of messages are sent to her directly.

Feminism has critiqued the “universal category” for decades and shown that what is seen as a “universal experience/person/category” is in fact a very specific group of people, a minority in fact: the white (Christian, often middle to upper-class) male experience. This “universal category” is deemed neutral, apolitical and reasonable, when in fact is filled with political ideologies, emotions and partisanship. This universality positions the male experience as neutral and every other identity as a deviation, even aberration of it, and it comes with a whole baggage of ideas, one of them being binary notions of gender and the equation of gender with sex.
To keep this decades-long discourse short: Wester society is built around the idea that aggressiveness, competitiveness, “genius”, power and other similar attributes are the recipe for success and these attributes are ascribed to men. “Real men” are supposed to be physically and emotionally aggressive and their intellectual capacity has little to do with individual skill but with the general idea that men are smarter than everyone else by virtue of being men.
The baseline of our society is male dominance and superiority but Oluo shows in this incredibly detailed and well-researched book that theory and practice do not overlap and how this toxic mindset poisons every corner of society, from economy and politics, to law and popular culture.

She explains the premise of the book as follows:

"I am not arguing that every white man is mediocre. I do not believe that any race or gender is predisposed to mediocrity. What I’m saying is that white male mediocrity is a baseline, the dominant narrative, and that everything in our society is centered around preserving white male power regardless of white male skill or talent. I also know that many white men accomplish great things. But I will argue that we condition white men to believe not only that the best they can hope to accomplish in life is a feeling of superiority over women and people of color, but also that their superiority should be automatically granted to them simply because they are white men. The rewarding of white male mediocrity not only limits the drive and imagination of white men; it also requires forced limitations on the success of women and people of color in order to deliver on the promised white male supremacy. White male mediocrity harms us all."

I think we all have experienced cases where mediocre men would be rewarded for their work equal to their superior non-white/non-male colleagues. I’ve majored in a field where 99% of students are women and I’ve seen how mediocre male students received the same grades as the top students in class, who were all women. I’ve read their papers, reports, and works and I can confidently say that our professor (a man) has treated each and every guy with kid gloves, like precious and brittle paper art that could crumble under the slightest of pressure. And I have seen how the same professor has not only judged women harder but also verbally and psychologically abused them.
Male mediocrity is more than just a personal anecdote, it a systemic problem. The students would never have succeeded with their mediocre work if not for the fact that the professor, also a mediocre researcher, didn’t support that mentality that permeates our society like toxic sludge.

In fact, Oluo explains that this mentality is a systemic issue, a societal, economic, and political one that goes beyond personal accounts. And she also explains how this mindset is to the detriment of everyone (including the white mediocre men she talks about here) as people strive for a toxic goal, a goal that is often unachievable, and how it connects to historical events, capitalism, racism, poverty, and sexism.

"When I talk about mediocrity, I am not talking about something bland and harmless. I’m talking about a cultural complacency with systems that are horrifically oppressive. I’m talking about a dedication to ignorance and hatred that leaves people dead, for no other reason than the fact that white men have been conditioned to believe that ignorance and hatred are their birthrights and that the effort of enlightenment and connection is an injustice they shouldn’t have to face.
When I talk about mediocrity, I talk about how we somehow agreed that wealthy white men are the best group to bring the rest of us prosperity, when their wealth was stolen from our labor.
When I talk about mediocrity, I am talking about how aggression equals leadership and arrogance equals strength—even if those white male traits harm the men themselves and the kingdom they hope to rule.
When I talk about mediocrity, I talk about success that is measured only by how much better white men are faring than people who aren’t white men.
When I talk about mediocrity, I am talking about the ways in which we can’t imagine an America where women aren’t sexually harassed at work, where our young people of color aren’t funneled into under-resourced schools—all because it would challenge the idea of the white male as the center of our country. This is not a benign mediocrity; it is brutal. It is a mediocrity that maintains a violent, sexist, racist status quo that robs our most promising of true greatness."

I cannot do justice to this in-depth analysis Oluo provides us with. She has done a formidable job at connecting historical events with current issues, showing how “white male mediocrity” is the foundation of our society through colonialism, capitalism, exploitation, White supremacy, and militarism. It promises young men that they will be the next billionaire, the motorbike riding hero with a leather jacket that gets the hot chick at the end. Promises of wealth, power, and sex that turn out to be glossy lies.
What is remarkable about her work is how she can write about the history of cowboys and lead us directly to current fascist militia groups and insurrections.
She does this by first talking about America’s colonization and the genocide of Native Americans and the killings of animals. She uses William Cody, aka Buffalo Bill, as an example. Cody scalped Yellow Hand in one of the many battles. He would mythologize his own act and perform the battle on stage hundreds of times. He was also responsible for killing over 4000 buffalos in a span of 18 months. Oluo shows that the US colonial government promoted the idea of manifest destiny, wherein white Christian settlers would conquer and claim indigenous lands according to their birthright as true and proper Christians. It also served as a legitimization for the many atrocities committed against Native Americans. Oluo shows that laws were enacted to hunt, kill, and “imprison” (aka put them into reservations) Native Americans. The buffalos were killed in such high numbers not only because the colonialists had no value for the lives of the animals, but because these animals were central for the survival of numerous Native American nations. The buffalos were killed to kill Native Americans. That was the end goal.
Cody’s story would inspire popular culture and really drive home the idea of Native Americans as an evil entity that needs to be dealt with violence and oppression. It even sparked the rise of Muscular Christianity.
The land stolen from Native Americans were then bought by white people, usually some corporations, and then “redistributed” aka sold to white settlers. The government created advertisements around the narrative of unclaimed land to cultivate that cemented the idea of a one-household-farming system, moving away from regular agricultural work, which has always been done in a community.
This narrative also included a strict division of labor, where men would work the fields and women be bound to numerous house duties, as well as be responsible for the “spiritual” education of the children.
So, now these white people would live on stolen land and claim it as their own, their ancestral home. In come current issues with taxation or protected animal reservations because many of these families still live on these violently stolen lands and they claim complete and utter independence from the state and government. Which, of course, is utter nonsense. Many regularly break the law by letting their animals grace within protected areas, like wild parks and trying to stop them is nearly impossible because not only are the areas vast, but these people also instantly rally their community, arm themselves heavily and start threatening people.
Oluo retells the specific case of one family and how they attracted national attention from various right-wingers and how they formed a militia, planned to attack the state government, and execute people. You know, an insurrection. (It’s almost as if there is a demographic that has been able to commit small scale insurrections for decades with impunity and they somehow had the idea to repeat it on a larger scale on January 6. It’s almost as if they think that their will is above everyone else’s and that they can do whatever they want and get away with it because that’s how it usually works.) And because these people were white, they were able to attack police forces and other executive branches (I think the military? Don’t remember tbh) without any of them losing their lives or being imprisoned. Instead, they garnered sympathy and through their sheer bloodlust were able to continue doing as they pleased.

Oluo’s book is full of insightful and thoroughly researched chapters. She not only covers the colonization of America but also on how men would dominate social justice movements and center their needs; how they’d make higher education nearly impossible to achieve for anyone else but white Christian men (universities explicitly stated, for example, that they didn’t want any Jews or Black people so they would create a system that would make it nearly impossible for Jews and Black people to enter the university…it’s not a coincidence that white men dominate(d) universities, it’s BY DESIGN); how men fail upwards (and how they can fail multiple times and monumentally without losing anything) while competent women can only ever lose and how within this system men would flee failing companies (even though they were responsible for the failing in the first place) and only then would women become CEOs in order to “save” the company; how many progressive men still hold racist and sexist views; etc.

This book is a must read, especially in our times, as we see more and more men flocking right-wing and fascist groups. Incels and MRAs, who promote a vile misogynistic ideology and propagate rape, spread their vitriol online and are attracting a generation of men who are disillusioned about their dating lives, who see women as a slot machine in which you put in niceness coins and get sexual gratification A generation growing up in a society that fed them popular media that solely focuses on their needs and that shows them women for their objectification and use. Only women are people, too, and they can say No to advances. And it is this No, this negation of a supposed birthright, that makes these men so angry that they radicalize further and further into fascist ideas.
Other men are disillusioned with their financial situation and work life and probably have undiagnosed or badly treated mental health issues. In a world of mediocrity, where one is seldom asked to be self-critical, unable to admit one is wrong and apologize, and isn’t able to put other people’s needs equal to their own, the don’t blame the root cause – capitalism + white supremacy + patriarchy – but instead find the next best marginalized community to shift the blame unto. Generations of men were promised greatness by their mere existence and the reality is: only a handful – and I do mean a handful, there are billions of people and a couple hundred actually achieve the wealth and prominence our society promotes as the ideal – will ever achieve this ludicrous idyll. Because the system is designed to fail for 99.9%. It’s a viscous cycle and Oluo manages to untangle that complex web into a compelling, educating, deeply disturbing, yet wonderfully written narrative.

Truly a must read.

Yay for more intersectional explorations of our deeply deeply flawed culture!
I love the work of Ijeoma Oluo, and when I saw the title of this book, I laughed out loud (since mediocre white men seem to be everywhere, and are often pulling the strings - badly), but I also knew that she would make this so much more than just about white male privilege, the violence that can result when the focus shifts to people unlike them, and where class and race fall into this.
Her arguments are extremely diverse topically: the explanation of the entitlement (and perceived masculinity) involved in Manifest Destiny, the presidential race of Shirly Chisholm, the fact that far-right groups consisting of white men are considered the largest terrorism in the US today, and the political and racial implications of college football.
Oluo, as a result of her racial justice and feminist work, she has been doxxed, swatted (in a way that put her teenage son in real terrifying danger), and has received so many death threats that she has a separate folder for them. To me, this means that her work is powerful. Her arguments are always clear in a way that can't be ignored, and it has obviously gotten under the skin of those that really think that efforts to eliminate white supremacy will somehow make lesser.
I will read anything she writes, and recommend her work to anyone I can.

A great deep dive into centuries of white, male supremacy and how it's shaped politics, history, culture and essentially every institution that exists today. Oluo's writing is informative and accessible, making it a must-read for the modern era.

I love Oluo's work. She does a phenomenal job of taking such a complex discussion of intersectional systemic injustices and framing it within an easily accessible kind of language. It is an achievement that cannot be understated. Furthermore, her breadth of knowledge that is shown throughout Mediocre is impressive; featuring a takedown of various different sections of the vast world of political and cultural influences that perpetuate injustice.

The author manages to present an incredibly easy to follow history of white American males. The actions of white males have left behind negative social, economic, and political environments for all other groups. While white male Americans are encouraged to pursue happiness and maintain leadership all other demographics have been pushed aside and undermined in their pursuit of the same goals.

Thank you NetGalley and Seal Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I appreciated this book for doing a deeper dive into ideas I've heard and sometimes held but admittedly never did more research about. It's all those things where you say, "Yeah, I know," but really what you "know" barely scratches the surface. Oluo did a great job making this an accessible read, which I think is sometimes difficult to do in nonfiction. The breakdown of chapters into different sections had a lot to do with that accessibility, in my opinion. My favorite chapter was the one about higher education as it relates directly to the work I am currently doing, and it allowed me to gain a larger context for the field; again, things I always knew but never got the details.

Enjoyed and this validated a lot of feelings ive been feeling over the past few years. White male rage has been an issue for a long time but feels heightened and more accepted with trump. While I’m not surprised about how we got here - I still found the book interesting!

Ijeoma Oluo consistently places a critic's lens to many of the West's most looming issues, this book is no different and provides just the quality analysis that I expect from the writer.

Never has a book made me more aware of my inherently privileged position as a white male. And the thing is, I am not even American, I come from by far the poorest and most discriminated against countries in Eastern Europe, Bulgaria. Jokes aside, though, Ijeoma Oluo’s book is a splendid analysis of many of the problems with contemporary American society. Yet, I just wished she kind of didn’t lump all white people together, for I find this to be just a tad reductionist, especially for those people living in Eastern Europe or the Balkans…

Eye-opening and relatable as a feminist. This book was so very clearly well researched, and it shows. I consider it must-read material.

An accessible and urgent analysis of white male supremacy, even for those who would claim they aren't racist. Oluo's examples and anecdotes hit hard, and her analysis is excellent. A must-read for those who would like to see a new society.

I received a reviewer copy of Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo from the publisher Perseus Books from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

CW: Racism, Sexism

What It’s About: This book is a microhistory of white male toxicity in America and the rules of law and society that upholds white supremacy. This book really covers from Buffalo Bill to Trump. This isn’t an attack on American conservatisms, look, it’s not a defense either, but this book is truly an examination of the toxicity of upholding white supremacy and how it affects every aspect. That’s to say Joe Biden is discussed almost more than Trump because this story is not about two white men, it is about a culture of oppression.

What I Loved: This is a really important and powerful read and I read it slowly so I could take my time and learn the material. This book is a great microhistory and I genuinely learned so much about how white supremacy has laid the bones of our society. This book is not meant as an indictment while the book highlights the failure and damage of a society that was built to uphold these racist and sexist ideas. This book discusses the harm it does to white men as well as marginalized people. I think the fact that Oluo does this makes this an excellent book to put into the hands of people who are perhaps less “woke” much like her former book ‘So You Want To Talk About Race. ‘ I loved the mix of history for each topic with current events. For instance, the stories of the women working during WW2 and losing their jobs after the men came home was also in the same chapter as women running tech companies today, truly thought this was excellent. I will be getting the paperback for my shelf.

What I Didn't Like So Much: I wish it was longer because honestly I learned so much but that is selfish of me.

Who Should Read This: People who want to be validated that they are not overblowing sexism, racism, or the way society functions. People who want to continue their antiracist reading. People who are willing to step outside their comfort zone. People who want an excellent microhistory.

Quick Summary: A microhistory about how America was built on white supremacy and uphold mediocre white men.