Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America Hardcover – December 1, 2020 by Ijeoma Oluo

Description

Author: Oluo Ijeoma

Brand: Seal Press

Package Dimensions: 37x242x549

Number Of Pages: 336

Release Date: 01-12-2020

Details: Product Description

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, an  “illuminating” (New York Times Book Review) history of white male identity.

What happens to a country that tells generation after generation of white men that they deserve power? What happens when success is defined by status over women and people of color, instead of by actual accomplishments?

Through the last 150 years of American history — from the post-reconstruction South and the mythic stories of cowboys in the West, to the present-day controversy over NFL protests and the backlash against the rise of women in politics — Ijeoma Oluo exposes the devastating consequences of white male supremacy on women, people of color, and white men themselves.
Mediocre investigates the real costs of this phenomenon in order to imagine a new white male identity, one free from racism and sexism.

As provocative as it is essential, this book will upend everything you thought you knew about American identity and offers a bold new vision of American greatness.

Review

“Wide-ranging in the cultural history it provides,
Mediocre illuminates the various ways white men work to maintain racial power.”―
New York Times

“A conversational call to action, an urging to rewrite our definition of White manhood and diminish the power it holds…. Oluo is asking us to evaluate the myths America tells itself about itself, see the violence within, be honest about the perpetrators and the victims, and then tell different stories. Truer ones. But she is also inviting us, on occasion, to chuckle. There is levity and voice in Mediocre.”―
Washington Post

“Searing…. Oluo lays out a sweeping cultural history of white men failing upward, from education to sports to politics….
Mediocre is a fast, engaging read, and Oluo is a warm, evenhanded narrator.”―
San Francisco Chronicle

“I’m eternally grateful, as I think everyone is who reads your book. Your books don’t come from a place of hate, but of determination to make a change… Thank you for writing another amazing book.”―
Trevor Noah, on “The Daily Show”

“Oluo examines the cultural and political underpinnings of what she calls the ‘mediocre-white-man-industrial complex.’ … She also digs into how, at different points in history, this country has failed women—a particularly salient reminder amid a pandemic that has driven hundreds of thousands of women out of the workforce.”―
Fast Company

“Oluo takes readers on a journey through 150 years of American history, from the post-reconstruction South to present-day controversy over NFL protests, all while pointing out the influence and costs of white male supremacy.”―
Katie Couric

“Ijeoma Oluo’s sharp yet accessible writing about the American racial landscape made her 2018 book,
So You Want to Talk About Race, an invaluable resource for anyone looking to understand and dismantle racist structures. Her new book,
Mediocre, builds on this exemplary work, homing in on the role of white patriarchy in creating and upholding a system built to disenfranchise anyone who isn’t a white male.”―
TIME

“Redefines the idea of American greatness”―
Cosmopolitan

“This well-researched, yet highly personal, tome shines a spotlight on modern-day racism and white supremacy.”―
USA Today

“As Ijeomo Oluo puts it in her new book
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, “By defining greatness as a white man’s birthright, we immediately divorce it from real, quantifiable greatness—greatness that benefits, greatness that creates.” Make America Great Again can be assumed to be about the former kind of greatness, and it was always a promise that greatness meant this long era of inequality. Inequality is the central platform of the right and Trumpism.”―
Rebecca Solnit, for LitHub

“Oluo’s ability to clearly and directly address the country’s most intractable and thorny issues of racism and misogyny have garnered her a legion of fans across the country and around the