by Ijeoma Oluo
To be clear, there never was and never will be a time when Ijeoma Oluo’s new book
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy Of White Male America (Seal Press) isn’t relevant. But reading history-rich analysis of white male supremacy and its toxic repercussions from the author of
So You Want To Talk About Race on the same week that the living personification of white grievance stormed the U.S. Capitol was like finding the key in the back of a fantasy novel: Suddenly, the labyrinthine gibberish started to make sense. Throughout the book, Oluo lifts the hood on institutional racism and sexism, breaking down everything from how white backlash to Reconstruction influenced widespread housing discrimination—and, in turn, racial wealth gaps—to online “brocialists” and their allergy to female power. (Hint: White male identity politics are still identity politics.) One by one, Oluo holds up parts of these complex and insidious engines, demonstrating for readers how each piece, as she puts it, “works by design.” One-star reviews of