Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America

by Ijeoma Oluo

When I discuss race and poverty, it is a common tactic of white trolls to ask me, “What about Chicago? That’s Black people shooting each other. There’s no white people in those neighborhoods keeping them poor. How do you explain that?” I hear them, and I envision Dr. King being knocked to the ground by a rock flung by white Chicagoans who were angry that he would dare fight for the ability for Black Chicagoans to move out of ghettos and try to improve their lives. I think of Black neighborhoods burned to the ground in East St. Louis. I think about anti-Black violence and terror in Black neighborhoods in Omaha, Houston, Indianapolis, Washington, D.C., and dozens of other cities across the country. I think of the massacre of Black Wall Street in Tulsa. I think of the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia. I think of all the times that Black Americans had to struggle to build communities and to build an economic foothold for those communities, only to have to start all over again.