This book hits a bit different after that cute little almost-coup the U.S. had last night, where hundreds (if not thousands) of armed white male Trump supporters gained entry to the Capitol building while Congress was certifying election results, looted government buildings including Nancy Pelosi's office, took photos with defaced historical objects, and faced virtually zero consequences. For BIPOC individuals watching this unfold, watching police officers basically open the gates for "protestors" (read: domestic terrorists), watching police officers take photos with these people, seeing a distinct lack of arrests, tear gas, pepper spray, and all of the militarized police violence that protestors marching for racial justice and equality faced - oh boy, does it feel like a slap in the face and a perfect example of what white men can largely get away with, what people of color and anyone without this level of privilege have to suffer.

That being said, this book obviously does not address the events of January 6, 2021, and instead spends a lot of its pages on history much further back - from Buffalo Bill Cody's traveling "scalping" show to men like Eastman and Dell being pseudo-early-feminists to the dismissal of Shirley Chisholm's political work and presidential campaign. Sometimes I felt the book was a little all over the place, organized into "themes" rather than historical timelines, jumping back and forth between the present and the past and general historical movements to specific political trends.

So, I treated these more like a collection of essays. Some of them really caught my attention and made me think/stew/boil - such as the essay on Bernie Bros, almost the whole section on higher education, and almost the whole section on women in the workplace. I felt that some of the other sections were a bit meandering, getting too lost in giving the history and context that it lost the thesis of the book.

My one criticism of this book is that she treats white men as a homogenous bloc, when I think the real two-headed monster is patriarchy and white supremacy, these two plagues that go hand-in-hand and support each other through thick and thin. Something rubs me the wrong way about saying that white men are to blame for every problem in the world, although I kind of know that to be true, there are some white men who aren't like this, and it's not productive/constructive to blame high-level, personless concepts like patriarchy. I don't know.

The epilogue of this book is amazing and leaves you ending on SUCH a high note. Oluo starts by describing an unlikely relationship she developed with a young woman named Carrah Quigley. After the August 2019 mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso (committed by a man who murdered in order to address "the Hispanic invasion of Texas"), Oluo tweeted about how we need to do better in addressing white male terrorism. She received an email from Quigley, who said that she's the daughter of a mass shooter and wanted to be of assistance in Oluo's new book. Although Quigley and Oluo have pretty different opinions about this topic, this quote really stuck out to me:

"'So much of what makes a white male angry is the climb and the hierarchy.' But I think it's more than just the climb. It's the expectation that many white men have that they should haven't to climb, shouldn't have to struggle, as others do. It's the idea not only that they think they have less than others, but that they were supposed to have so much more. When you are denied the power, the success, or even the relationships that you think are your right, you either believe that you are broken or you believe that you have been stolen from. White men who think they have been stolen from often take that anger out on others. White men who think they are broken take that anger out on themselves."

If you are a liberal, I think you'll enjoy this book. I'm not sure you'll enjoy it if you don't agree with Oluo's politics (I'm not sure that it's one of those books that can change hearts and minds for people whose hearts and minds need to be changed). Thank you to the publisher for the ARC!

I think Ijeoma Oluo's new book, Mediocre, is an absolute must-read. She breaks down how institutions structured around white male mediocrity have affected society for centuries and how this structure is continuing to affect us today.

I was immediately hooked by the introduction when she talks of the phrase "works by design." We say our institutions are broken, but they are working as designed. White men have always been in positions of power, and have built their identity around the oppression of marginalized groups such as women and people of color. And, when white men don't get their way, they immediately place blame on these marginalized groups instead of looking at the institutions they are a part of.

Oluo's writing is clear and meaningful, and includes resonant quotes such as: "We as a society have somehow convinced ourselves that we should be led by incompetent assholes." Through discussion of United States history and institutions such as higher education, Oluo constructs a powerful narrative of how we got to where we are. As I read more non-fiction work, I realize how much racist US history is actually omitted and whitewashed, and it angers me that this is the case.

Oluo did a wonderful job wrapping up the book and talking of how to address white male mediocrity. She mentioned recognizing how complicit we are in our institutions, as well as breaking the cycle of fear and violence that white male mediocrity perpetuates. I would recommend her work to anyone looking to educate themselves more on how we got to where we are, as well as how our institutions are designed to benefit a certain set of people.

Simply put, everyone must read this book. This book asks and uniquely answers "how did we get here?" The formating of this is great and I can't wait to tell everyone I know to read this!

Oluo has done amazing interviews about this book and the question on anyone's mind as to why the focus was on the DT. The reason, because he's a symptom of the mediocre not the cause and I think that gives you a glimpse of the brilliance that you'll find in this book.

Ijeoma Oluo’s writing is so goddamn potent. Mediocre is a strong feminist view of American history and the mediocrity of white men and, whew, is it biting.

Warning: may make you want to punch the white men around you.

But truly excellent, and Ijeoma DOES talk us off that ledge a bit when she writes the conclusion. 😬

Mediocre is another amazing book by Ijeoma Oluo. I read her book So You Want to Talk about Race and really enjoyed it, so I was very excited to hear she was writing another.
Mediocre is about the history of white men and how it has been detrimental to every other group in America. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to learn more about the social issues that stem from years of Mediocre White Men controlling everything.
I learned a lot while reading this book and I think that many others will too.

Insightful and impactful. While I live and work in Canada, Oluo's observations about white supremacist and patriarchal social "norms" that perpetuate (deliberately) inequities can be transposed here. The tradition that grants grace and opportunity to the same people and types of people over and over is very familiar. The research and examples cited in the book make the arguments impactful, and the observations are even more affecting given the excellent, almost lyrical writing. Additionally, Oluo writes of historical events in parallel to her own and her family's experiences. That entree into her life is a generosity that we don't really deserve.

Ijeoma Oluo is a gem of our era, due to enter the canon of widely lauded feminist authors any day now. Mediocre is a perfect book for our moment in time but also captures the historical legacy of white men’s ability to fail upwards.

This was such an eye-opening and thought-provoking book! It was wonderfully written and informative, though at times it felt more like a series of related essays than a cohesive book. Still, I highly recommend it!

The final chapter discussing football was especially interesting to me. I've struggled with my love of the sport over the past few years, and Ijeoma Oluo only added to my unease about the exploitative nature of both college football and the NFL. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for early access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

Oluo does a fantastic job illuminating what many are already well aware of but is still unknown to many others. While this particular file itself made it very difficult to read (the punctuation and formatting were so all over the place in this ARC that I struggled to physically read it) however it's power did shine through. Recommended reading to all.

I will be finishing this book before bed tonight, and I've thoroughly enjoyed reading it! In this book, the author explores how mediocre white men continue to hinder the growth America. While the chapters are long, each one is well-organized into shorter sections (or case studies) that illustrate the main idea of the chapter. I appreciate that the author used multiple pieces of evidence to support each point, and the evidence came from a variety of centuries/decades. As a current working-class, woman, PhD student, I found the chapter on higher education especially intriguing. I will definitely be recommending this book to my family, fellow PhD friends, professors, and students!

Mediocre explores the damaging rhetoric of our white patriarchal society where white males are encouraged that being a white and male is achievement enough and they do not need to strive to be better.

Oluo pulls no punches as she takes aim at both historical and current events. I was particularly fascinated with her analysis of Bernie Bros and Biden's political history.

This is a must read for all but most specifically it needs to be on your list of anti-racist literature.

I read So You Want to Talk About Race soon after it's release and adored how Ijeoma Oluo explained things in a way that just really worked with my brain. I was a little nervous going into this one because it seemed like it was going to involve a lot more history and despite loving history as a student, I'm not always good at reading about it now. I am pleased to report that all of my concerns were for naught. Ijeoma Oluo is remarkable at how well she takes this pretty huge idea and cuts it down into very understandable pieces with perfectly chosen illustrative examples. I think this book likely could have spiraled into such a huge project that would have felt overwhelming, but Oluo is deliberate in what she chose to include and discuss. You can tell that her examples were chosen with care and really expanded and shed light on things and people who have a very one-sided positive history most commonly told today. I am still seething over the fact that President Teddy Roosevelt has a reputation of being a conservationist when he just kept ignoring the treaties the US made with Native people and took land that was never meant to belong to this country.

This book was well organized and has section headers that I really appreciated. In the introduction, Oluo talks about how things "work by design" so even when something is infuriating and unjust, but there's "nothing to be done" that it's often a sign of something working just as it was designed. This is a theme that carries through the entire collection and is really powerful. Oluo makes the case that we have to try something different if we are to save the planet and our country and it's a compelling argument. It's also subtle in some ways. She pulls back sometimes on sharing her opinion to give space for the reader to come to their own conclusion. It's the cross-examination method of asking every question but the last one because you want the jury to be forming the answer to that last question themselves. All of the pieces are there and at the very end, in her closing argument, Oluo hammers her points home. She does so effectively in large part because of how beautifully the rest of the book is laid out. Her conclusion introduces us to a new white man and takes a trek down the mass and school shooter line of reasoning. I would have appreciated more time on this topic, but I think it's a brilliant place for her to end with an appeal to readers to do something. To change the design.

Despite not reading my e-arc, I am very grateful to the publisher and Netgalley for providing it to me. I am deeply apologetic that I took my time after spending my audio credit on release day, but, for the record, I highly recommend the audio. Oluo narrates herself and I appreciate her narration.

One final point, y'all may know I mostly read romance novels, and Oluo's last paragraph in the acknowledgements is one of the most romantic things I've ever read and I would like someone to please point me in the direction of any romance novel that sounds similar to her real life love story. I hope Oluo and her partner have many, many years of happiness.

4.5. Oluo is stellar, as always, as she depicts what makes the mediocre white man think that he rules the world. It's an arduous and depressing read, but it's worth your time (especially with the amount of mediocre white men who are wrecking havoc on our world right now). The first several chapters and the conclusion were the strongest for me, but the whole book is well researched.

White people do not deserve the grace, patience, and wit of Ijeoma Oluo, who gives a clear-eyed accounting of America's grotesque history, steeped as it is in unfathomable racism and misogyny, and the white supremacist patriarchy that has brought us to where we are today. Do we dare imagine where we could be now if we treated women and people of color as though they could know or be good at the things we believe white men to be good at?

“How often have you heard the argument that we have to slowly implement gender and racial equality in order to not “shock” society? Who is the “society” that people are talking about? I can guarantee that women would be able to handle equal pay or a harassment-free work environment right now, with no ramp-up. I’m certain that people of color would be able to deal with equal political representation and economic opportunity if they were made available today. So for whose benefit do we need to go so slowly?”

In “Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America,” Ijeoma Oluo masterfully dissects American history by isolating case studies where white male mediocrity has been mythologized and celebrated at the expense of women and particularly women of colour. Meticulously researched, Oluo crafts her thesis in her deliberate but accessible voice, while at the same time maintaining an ultimately optimistic, redemptive tone that urges all of us to do better.

One of the case studies that I found particularly gripping was her exploration of modern day football. Of course I was familiar with Colin Kaepernick but Oluo fleshes out the inequities in the sport itself, highlighting how it functions as a microcosm of what we see beyond the stadium. As someone who is admittedly not into football, I learned so much from this chapter in particular about the continued exploitation of many Black bodies (and Black minds after all of those concussions) for the sake of entertainment and capital gain.

I particularly appreciated how Oluo recognizes how white patriarchy hurts everyone, including white men. She makes a compelling argument for growth at a crucial juncture in history and I highly recommend this one as your next non-fiction read.

Oluo’s work outlines the story and the toll of white male supremacy. Using a wide range of examples she describes the impact of the construct of white male power and its harm - harm to marginalized groups and harm that reverberates collectively, inclusive of white men themselves.

The blend of historical and more current examples skillfully reveals the extensive and insidious nature of the ongoing efforts to uphold and center the cis white male perspective. Through these examples, Oluo reveals how we, individually and collectively, both perpetuate and are victimized by white male supremacy.

She makes connections that at first were not obvious to me and is clearly a skilled researcher and writer. I learned quite a lot, and I’m grateful to her work, which provides this space and context to be able to continue to unlearn, reframe, reflect, and grow. The system is working as designed... however as Oluo breaks down here... for whom is it working for, really?

This book was completely eye-opening. While some of the basic principles were familiar to me from other anti-racism reads, the different case studies she presented were equal parts fascinating and depressing. The chapters that particularly struck me were the ones on higher Ed and football. While the majority of the book is on race, the author does also address women’s rights, as part of the contrast to the mediocrity of white men.

I think everyone should read this book.

In Mediocre, Ijeoma Oluo explores the mediocre aspirations to power of White Men - and the implications it has for everyone competing with them, including themselves. Be exploring the historical context of white supremacy and white power, she discusses the effects and oppression of several groups of people, including indigenous Americans, women aspiring to power, Women of Color aspiring to power, and the violence against Black Americans, to name a few. She explores historical and contemporary figures and eras, including the legend of Buffalo Bill, the presidential run of Shirley Chisholm, and the protests of Black Athletes in response to police brutality. Oluo integrates historical data, professional and critical analysis, and her own snarky opinion to coherently bring together what I feel is a solid argument. Oluo's personal commentary and anecdotal evidence to support the research only adds to her argument. She provides a well-researched, social commentary on white supremacy and it's negative effects on fully making progress. in our country. I personally had so many highlighted quotes and sections from this book, several take aways on the implications of her arguments, and honestly spent half the time reading the book aloud to my partner out of shock, and some dark humor. Her humor is fantastic - not the ha ha type, but the "I need to laugh about this or I'll cry" type. Overall, if you want a good exploration into some of the problems behind our lack of progress in this country, presented by a thoughtful, intelligent and well organized argument, I highly recommend this book.