[yesmagazine.org]
Tough Love for Mediocre White Guys: Getting White men to give up dominance is a challenge
A review of Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo

By Robert Jensen / May 10, 2021

I am White, male, and American. 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.”

That comment came in conversations with students about inflated faculty egos, partly as a caution to myself. In universities, the coin of the realm is being a big thinker with original ideas. But most of us aren’t big thinkers, and original ideas are rare. 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. 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.

I’m not special, but I live in a culture that designates people who look like me as the standard. A White supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist society props up White guys not because we’re superior but precisely because we’re not. White guys need the unearned advantages to keep alive the fantasy that we deserve to be on top. 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.

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.