Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America

by Ijeoma Oluo

White men lead our ineffective government with almost guaranteed reelection. They lead our corrupt and violent criminal-justice system with little risk of facing justice themselves. And they run our increasingly polarized and misinforming media, winning awards for perpetrating the idea that things run best when white men are in charge. This is not a stroke of white male luck; this is how our white male supremacist systems have been designed to work.

Many of our business and political leaders were freed to dedicate their time and energy to their professional success by the unpaid labor of wives and mothers and the underpaid labor of nannies and housekeepers.

Whiteness and masculinity are threatened both where their station or behavior begins to approach that expected of Blackness and femininity, and where Blackness or femininity strays from its expected role and no longer serves as a direct contrast to whiteness and masculinity. These dual constraints are important to realize, because while whiteness and masculinity are the two most powerful identities in a white male patriarchy, they are also wholly dependent on the identities they oppress.