The sick and sad history of the American South gets special attention, but no region is spared.Īnd no one is spared, including White men who have written about social justice for three decades. From there Oluo takes us on a painful tour through White masculinity in higher education, social movements, sports, politics, labor, and business. The first chapter grounds us in the pathological American mythologies of brave men taming the frontier, embraced by Buffalo Bill at the end of the 19th century and still present in the self-indulgent anti-government fantasies of Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and similar “patriots” in the 21st. Mediocre offers ample evidence for her thesis. 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. “… 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 am not arguing that every white man is mediocre,” writes Oluo. That’s why Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America (Seal Press, 2020) by Ijeoma Oluo is not a threat to White guys but a gift, offering the social/political tough love that we need to see society-and ourselves-more clearly.
That fantasy is not harmless-our embrace of dominance means subordinating people who don’t look like us, which creates an incentive for White men to remain clueless. White guys need the unearned advantages to keep alive the fantasy that we deserve to be on top.
A White supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist society props up White guys not because we’re superior but precisely because we’re not. I’m not special, but I live in a culture that designates people who look like me as the standard. My quip wasn’t the result of a lack of self-confidence I was simply suggesting that an honest self-assessment helps one do useful work. Rather than being satisfied with being competent-a hard enough standard to meet-professors too often puff themselves up, a weakness to which White guys are especially vulnerable. But most of us aren’t big thinkers, and original ideas are rare.
In universities, the coin of the realm is being a big thinker with original ideas. That comment came in conversations with students about inflated faculty egos, partly as a caution to myself. When I taught at the University of Texas at Austin, I routinely joked that “the secret to my success is that I’m mediocre, and I know it.”
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