westward expansion and cowboy mythology that fueled Native American genocide male feminists the two-facedness of Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and the often vicious Bernie Bros the war on higher education racism in the NFL and mediocre White men in the workplace. She traces mediocre White men across centuries to the present, including the bloody U.S. Understanding this history, Oluo believes, is a prerequisite for survival and for enacting the systemic change that is required to alter the situation. Not surprisingly, White men are currently the “biggest domestic terror threats in this country.” As the author clearly shows, “today’s titans of white male mediocrity” are part of a long line of “arrogant, entitled, irresponsible, willfully ignorant bullies” in powerful positions. When average White men fail to reap what they believe is their natural birthright, they turn their rage not on elite White men but rather on the women and people of color they blame for their loss of opportunity. While everyone else has to excel in order to get by, writes Oluo, we reward mediocre White men’s bad behavior: “We have, as a society, somehow convinced ourselves that we should be led by incompetent assholes.” White male mediocrity sustains “a violent, sexist, racist status quo” and robs others of greatness and keeps them powerless and poor. In the U.S., a country built on slavery and exploitation, millions of Americans insist that our political, economic, legal, and educational systems are meritocracies when they clearly aren’t.

The author of So You Want To Talk About Race takes a close look at the perils and constraints of White male identity.

Mediocre ijeoma oluo