Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power

by Ijeoma Oluo

But none of Brian’s so vigorously defended political beliefs were based in reality. No “thug” had tried to take his life in the street, and yet he still clung to his belief that he needed access to guns in order to protect himself. He had never encountered any Muslim terrorism in his Midwestern suburb, but he was still convinced that there were terrorists eager to cross the border to bomb his subdivision. From these made-up horrors, these fictionalized enemies, he had created a villain worthy of the violent bravado that he imagined he would display if confronted by said villain. This web of racist lies was what he needed to make himself seem like a man.

Mediocre white men who want to be heroes too often feel the need to fabricate villains to justify their imagined role—even if that means vilifying entire populations of people. Their dreams of grand adventures are mere whims and fantasy, but the violence such white men visit upon others is often very, very real.

Perhaps one of the most brutal of white male privileges is the opportunity to live long enough to regret the carnage you have brought upon others.

Whiteness and masculinity are two identities that are built almost exclusively as the inverse of that which their identities oppress. Where whiteness is smart, Blackness is dumb. Where whiteness is successful, Blackness is a failure. Where masculinity is strong, femininity is weak. Where masculinity is analytical, femininity is emotional.

The greatest risks to identities of color or womanhood in a white supremacist patriarchy are the white supremacy and patriarchy that seek to control them.

Even the most virulent American racist has to wrestle with the fact that the United States would not exist were it not for people of color. The blood that soaked this soil so it could be called America came from Native people.

Why do these white men need to be angry at us? People of color—especially Black people, Hispanic people, Indigenous people, and people of Middle Eastern descent—are convenient scapegoats for white people who are disappointed by life’s outcomes.

Even though there are more women in the workplace than ever before, even though women are now more likely than men to get a college degree, and even though we can look up just about any corporate values statement and see something about “gender equality” written there—workplaces across the country are still, by and large, antiwoman. American business today is still a world run by and for white men. Women are ignored at best, treated like hostile intruders or sex objects at worst. After many decades of struggle, we are still so far away from gender equity that we can’t even see it.

In 2019, women made up just 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Five percent. And yet women make up a little more than half the overall population. We find more dudes named John at the heads of top companies than women.

But what are women worth? What would it look like to value us and our potential? What is the risk of destroying our careers before they even start?

Over half of all people killed by police are disabled.

Right now, white men are the biggest domestic terror threats in this country. They are shooting up schools, shopping malls, and casinos. Seventy percent of school shooters are white males.6 In the years since the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, white male terrorists have killed more Americans than Jihadi terrorists.7

I do not believe that these white men are born wanting to dominate. I do not believe they are born unable to feel empathy for people who are not them. I do not believe they are born without any intrinsic sense of value. If I did, this would be a very different book. I believe that we are all perpetrators and victims of one of the most evil and insidious social constructs in Western history: white male supremacy.

When women and people of color try to free themselves from the oppression of white male supremacy, they are viewed as direct threats to the very identity of white men, and the power structure upholding that identity works swiftly to eliminate the threat.

We have to investigate the way in which all of us, regardless of race or gender, have been conditioned to uphold white male supremacy. We are expected to support white male supremacy in order to get a promotion, to be respected by our peers, for our children to succeed in school. We must ask ourselves what we are willing to give up in order to be free.