Deeply researched, accessibly written, and thought- (and rage- and determination-) provoking. (Will Ms. Oluo be speaking at Midwinter?)

I don’t think it is possible to write a review commensurate with this book. The structure is phenomenal, the writing is both powerful and accessible, and the information is invaluable.

Oluo dives into topics such as the wild west persona, the context behind American football, the perception of liberal arts colleges, and the concept of white male mediocrity that is interwoven into just about about every single aspect of society. It is absolutely shocking how the American education system twists history in a way that quite literally erases the experiences of those are not white and male. One of the many, many things that I admire about Ijeoma Oluo is her ability to continue to have empathy and compassion and truly believe that we CAN change this system. People made this system and people can dismantle this system.

All I can say is read. this. book.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this advance copy--all opinions are my own!

Admittedly this has been a heavy year and an entire book enumerating the pervasive, systemic nature of white supremacist patriarchy wasn’t always easy to stay in—this is not a reflection of the book in any negative way; in fact, it points to how effective and thorough it is. This book points to so many ways our culture is set up for white male success not as a meritocracy but as a rigged system that does a disservice to all. I’m not sure how many guys comfortable in the system will want to read this but I hope they do, and I hope those who don’t understand how embedded white patriarchy is in our social psyche will read it, too.

This book is chilling and infuriating and incredibly powerful to read, especially as a woman in 2020. Oluo is masterful in the way she articulates her research.

This book is anything but mediocre. Ijeoma Oluo’s first book “So you want to talk about Race,” was a necessary and timely (or more appropriately, about-timely) read for anyone who finds it easy to spot anecdotal injustices in society but doesn’t understand the complexity of the history (and their own partaking in that flawed system) that led to that point.

The inspiration for this book was Sarah Hagi’s , “Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man.” With similar poise and restraint, Oluo delves deeper into that which we all know on some level; the realisation that the systems we have in place are flawed and need to be replaced with fairer models.

Life is not fair because the system is horribly flawed. Life could be fair. Oluo does extensive, and personally traumatic, socio-political research into how and why it’s not and proposes a solution. The design is flawed. We need to throw it out and start again. The softly softly approach of not demanding great change - that time has passed.

We all know that mediocre white man. He knows he is mediocre. He’s the guy that lives by the code: “Never apologise, never explain.” He may act like a friend to the feminists and virtue-signals support for Black Lives Matter, but is resentful of his girlfriend when her earnings surpass his. He despises women who outsmart him and will lash out at her appearance, weight, ethnicity, intelligence, anything that he feels will redress the imbalance. He hates that suddenly the world is gone PC mad, that his homophobic, sexist and racist jokes are no longer tolerated. The terrible system which has benefitted him is under threat even though it was terrible for him too. The reason he wants this flawed system to stay in place?

He knows he is mediocre too.

His mediocrity is rewarded by a system that favours him in every instance of his life and yet he still doesn't rise to the top. His fallback is to blame women and people of colour every time he fails.

To be fair, everyone knows men are mostly useless. They are mostly inconsiderate, try walking down any street anywhere. They expect you to get out of their way. They’ll interrupt, or talk over you. They mansplain things to us we already know or interrupt. They think funny women are women that laugh at their jokes. They feel sexually repelled by their partners when their partner outperforms them at work. They don’t do their fair share of childcare. They can’t be relied upon to remember things like anniversaries or what to buy when grocery shopping. They complain about the flu. They are terrible at wearing masks during pandemics.
These are just the minor grievances.

They also have set up a system, which is flawed, which pivots around them at its centre, making them feel entitled. Entitled to women, jobs, the best of everything. Even though they know they didn’t earn this. That doesn’t matter to them. The system got them this. So when everything doesn’t work out perfectly, they lash out at those they’ve already oppressed, like women and people of colour.

But this isn’t a book that explains how to navigate microagressions. It tears open the macro agressions and macro injustices and demands a better future.

The blurb calls this book a “scathing indictment.” I disagree. Once again, despite a myriad of reasons not to be, her tone is calm, if a little resigned and dismayed. The tone has every right to be angry when you read all the atrocities. They are no less than crimes against humanity.

Shockingly, she exposes white supremacy as everywhere, not just in some alt-right corner of some place far away from us. It is more insidious than that, she writes.
The expose of the Bernie Sanders supporters was fascinating. Allies until they are asked to make actual sacrifices. The lip-service allies.

The early social feminists, Dell and Eastman, was a scrap of history I knew nothing about before and it was disappointing but not surprising to see how they exploited the feminist movement to suit themselves. As Oluo puts it: A lot of what seemed to appeal to their vision of a feminist future revolved around their dicks.

I’d never heard of busing and it was very interesting to see olden days Joe Biden’s volte-face on it (1972). Busing is the practise of busing people of colour into white schools to try to end segregation. These black kids were often assaulted by white parents. Biden ended up not knowing whether he was for it or against it. It seemed he was for it when it happened in other states, and was against it on his own doorstep. He spent 8 years fighting busing and but as recently as 2019 only focusses on that one time in 1974 when he supported it.

In the Ivy League chapter, Oluo takes aim at higher education. Again, this is shocking reading. Trump blatantly dog whistles his supporters by claiming he loves the uneducated yet made sure three of his kids went to the same university as him. He hounded AOC and Biden for their transcripts but told Wharton to never release his, under any circumstances.

Woodrow Wilson, ex President, was a total racist. When he was president of Princeton, he refused to let a single black student in. Like Cecil Rhodes, when students complained, they were told: Pfff, everyone was racist back then. Higher education is an escape route but it is still part of that very flawed, very white, very supremacist system. I work in a university and I have seen firsthand how professors will bemoan that such and such candidate was lost due to the need for a gender and geographical balance across the group, thus actively undermining the very reparations set up to repair the damage of the system to minorities.

Olou truly understands the injustices towards black people, and it is only when people of colour and women and other minorities unite to fight off patriarchal oppression will we have a system that is actually fair.

Another must read book for anyone interested in social change.

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America should be required reading for everyone living in the United States. Oluo look at the ways in which power structures are set up in our country to best serve white males. She explores the ways in which white men often enter spaces reserved for women and people of color, perhaps under the guise of “helping”, but in actuality to take over and exert control on these spaces and be expected to receive thanks for doing so. The book looks at these issues through a variety of topics including America’s cowboy legacy, women in politics and sports. This book is well-researched and Oluo makes her points with passion and precision. A well written and necessary book for our times. Thank you to Seal Press and NetGalley for the chance to read this book.

I was halfway through reading this eGalley when I became excited at the thought of getting to reading it again once it comes out and I can buy a physical copy. I am a person who enjoys the thought of reading non-fiction, but I have a hard time actually reading non-fiction when I have a stack of fantasy books staring at me. I credit Ijeoma Oluo's writing style for capturing my attention so thoroughly that I had a hard time putting this book down.

Oluo breaks down how American society relies on the myth that white men deserve more than any woman or person of colour. She puts into words how our society has always uplifted the white male voice, and what happens when white men feel they aren't "getting what they deserve." Oluo clarifies why white men can produce mediocre work and be praised for it, but any other demographic is held to an impossibly high standard when producing work in the same area.

Before reading this book, I felt like I had a good general sense of the impact white men have in our society when they believe they deserve all the power and privilege. After reading Mediocre, I realize I never actually questioned how we arrived at this point in history. Mediocre provides a different perspective of the consequences in what uplifting white men for generations has had on populations of women, people of colour, and white men themselves, while showing us what has led white men to believe that they deserve more than other demographics.

This is an incredibly heavy topic but Oluo writes in a way that makes the subject readable and easy to understand. She skillfully boils down complex social topics into their base components, making them easy to comprehend. Oluo makes her point, but then also backs up her point with mountains of evidence to show how she came to her conclusions. I honestly believe that most people will be able to pick up this book and be able to understand exactly why our society is set up to fail almost every single person within it.

This is a book to read, re-read, and re-read again. Mediocre made me boil with rage, but in a way that made me want to tell everyone I know, and even people I don't know, to read this book. This is definitely a book that everyone, especially if they're white and male, should read.

Ijeoma Oluo's books are frequently recced for anti-racist reading, and this is just great and timely with the election coming up. It's an uncomfortable read at times, but it is important to feel uncomfortable.

I picked up this book because I read So You Want to Talk About Race earlier this year. But Mediocre was nothing like it. In this book, Ijeoma Oluo sets out to talk about the dangerous legacy of white male America. I found some of the histories and breaking things down from a perspective that is not white was enlightening. But I felt like I was missing a piece of the main thesis of Mediocre. I also recognize I'm coming at this topic from a white perspective and am very hesitant to criticize the way this book was written because I realize I've missed parts of the story for my entire life. Many parts of the end of this book felt like a rant against institutions. I'm not sure I learned as much from the second half of the book as the first. While I"m open to learning, I'm not sure this book is the most helpful in learning about white male supremacy.

With this title and this cover, how do you not pick it up and devour every word the brilliant Ijeoma Oluo writes? I have always enjoyed her writing, but this book is next level brilliant. She boils down the essence of the mediocracy of white men with vignettes from the wild west to now. Tracking white male supremacy seems like a huge undertaking, but focusing on great examples of how the fragile white male ego has given us nothing but grief in the past 100 years was a great way to get her point across. I especially loved the chapter on Bernie Sanders and his bullying supporters. I also learned a lot about the racism within the NFL, which I had never really paid attention to before, as well as the myriad of issues within higher education.

My favorite chapter, though, was on Shirley Chisholm and her bid for the presidency in the 1970s. I wish so many more people knew her story and I'm glad Oluo features her so prominently in the book. Oluo is such a powerful writer, and her calls for change are vital and relevant, especially this year. I am happy her voice as a prominent leader of the Black and feminist social movement is being heard so loudly. My only wish is that we could have her opinions on the pandemic and the BLM movement from this year in the book as well, as so much has changed in such a short amount of time. However, mediocre white men are still taking up all our energy and space as we live through the peak time in the election of our lives, so things haven't changed all that much either.

Author Ijeoma Oluo does an excellent job giving an overview of racist systems present in the United States. There is no white male aspect that is left unexamined, including the racism that comes bubbling up from supposed allies in the social justice movement. I can't say the book was a major revelation to me personally because I was already on board with the premise from before I read the first page. I also don't know if someone who already doesn't agree will be able to get much out of this book, it is more a way for those engaged in dialogue about racism to have some cogent talking points to work off of. I did find the juxtaposition of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in the chapter on politics to be a bit jarring. Biden is definitely a racist, his support of anti-busing legislation and the 1994 Crime Bill are clear indicators he supports systemic racism. The complaint about Bernie is centered around "Bernie Bros", a term that is insensitively reductive to the PoC who make up a large portion of that Leftist movement. I definitely don't see Bernie as a deity, he's a little too moderate for my tastes, but his transgression really falls into the "awkward talking about race in 2016" category as opposed to Biden's "actively legislating racism into society his whole career" column.

“Perhaps one of the most brutal manifestations of white male privileges,” writes Ijeoma Oluo, “is the opportunity to live long enough to regret the carnage you have brought upon others.”

Mediocre is a multifaceted antiracist text about the legacies of white supremacy in America, linking historical oppression with their manifestations in the modern day. Using case studies, Ijeoma Oluo alternately gives a theory-focused account of the United States’ racist and colonialist history and balances it against personal essays dissecting the dominant glory-obsessed white capitalist hypermasculine culture in America. The book is narrative and well cited, and read very accessibly.

This is a well researched and structurally excellent historical and political volume, but what sets it apart is the personal nature of the writing. I’m reasonably well read on several of the issues covered by Oluo, but it’s Oluo’s passionate and comprehensive perspective that sell this book. This book is especially good for anyone with a solid foundation in American history, news, or politics who would benefit from fleshing out their knowledge on those topics through a compassionate, comprehensive, and antiracist lens.

My main critique is that the conceit of the book sometimes created one-sided arguments. In the chapter exploring the shortcomings of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Democratic nomination campaign, the lens of the book implies that Clinton would have been more uplifting to the people Bernie Sanders’ campaign most alienated: women and people of colour. Clinton’s close corporate ties and weak social policy aside, her aggressively imperialist foreign policy and silence on the very prescient Dakota Access pipeline protests at Standing Rock speaks volumes about her interest in uplifting marginalized peoples. The book is about critiquing specifically cis white male supremacy, under which banner HRC doesn’t fully fall, so no substantial critique of HRC’s policy is offered, despite a systematic takedown of Sanders’. I’m no Bernie Bro—I’m not even American—but it was disorienting to see such a thorough (and good!) takedown of Bernie with no mention of Clinton’s policy shortcomings.

A final note is that, though language inclusive of trans people was present, it was often an afterthought, at times literally parenthetical. This book isn’t about gender variance; as Oluo herself points out, this book should be celebrated for centering her experience and outlook as a Black woman. But a critical consideration of masculinity without significantly accounting for trans genders creates a weaker consideration of gender in general. Similarly, Indigenous peoples' histories were not significantly included in the book, again something Oluo may not have felt entirely qualified to address thoroughly in a volume aiming to centre a Black woman's perspective, but the elision felt notable in several places.

Nevertheless, this is a great read that achieves what it set out to do with sharp, passionate writing that is well researched, well organized, and persuasive.

I was very excited to read this book after all of the positive reviews around “So you want to talk about race” book. I love this book and can relate to it a lot in my personal life as a Black woman. I appreciate the social commentary and would recommend this book to others.

Mediocre is an incredible book about how the systems around us are built to reward white men for the bare minimum, and the impact it's had on everyone else throughout history and today. With a blend of research, current pop culture references, and optimism, Ijeoma Oluo wrote a must-read!

Oluo is writing such important literature during this time and more people need to take note of this. Mediocre is no different and opened my eyes to so many systemic issues we deal with on a daily basis.

There could not be a more perfect moment for this book. Mediocre takes a look at the impact of while male dominance throughout history, with specific focus men who made the decisions that have impacted so much of our history and our current lives. I found the idea here, and the reporting, enthralling. Oluo looks are several key aspects of history and modern culture, including the NFL and the legacy of the 'cowboy', and explores how figures central to these things exerted their dominance over woman and people of colour. The author looks at how white male dominance has grown and developed over decades, and zeroes in on the lasting and continuing impacts of this on all of our lives. It's thoughtful, intelligent, and frightening. Hopefully, this becomes as big as Oluo's previous book. It needs to read.

I’m sure you’ve all heard Sarah Hagi’s famous quip, “Lord, grand me the confidence of a mediocre white man.” In her new book, Ijeoma Oluo takes that quotation and runs with it, examining precisely why mediocre white men are so often found in positions of power and influence when they’re just so mediocre. The book examines American social and power structures, from Buffalo Bill’s stage shows to American higher education to the NFL, asking why so many excellent non-white and non-male people are shut out of leadership roles in favor of less excellent white men. Don’t miss this one when it comes out in December!

I love this book so hard. Ijeoma Oluo writes something me serious truth. Reading this book is both enraging and empowering. The antidote to the constant gaslighting by non mediocre white men on our entire culture. Yaaaasssssss!

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.