Book Review/Heather Seggel

Failing Upwards

There’s a theme that runs through much of Ijeoma Oluo’s work that felt abstract to me when I first encountered it. In the bestseller “So You Want to Talk About Race,” [Seal Press] she plainly calls white supremacy a “pyramid scheme.” That book guides readers through the intimidating topics that can make conversations about race so charged, and points out how many of us invest in a system that keeps white authority in place even as the substantive benefits of that control only accrue to a small number of people who already have power. Oluo’s new book, “Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America,” [Seal Press] touches on the theme again, using a series of historical parallels to show how little things change without dedicated effort. Don’t let the title turn you off: It’s illuminating, fiercely intelligent, and argued with more compassion than its subjects probably deserve.

An introduction titled “Works According to Design” sets the tone quickly. It’s a phrase that pops up in racial justice circles when something horrible but predictable comes to pass; examples include a white defendant getting house arrest for a second DUI while a youth of color is sent to prison for selling weed. Oluo then widens the lens on that “design” to include our nation as a whole, from the government where white men are reelected to positions they often do not excel in, to a justice system rotten from the inside out and media landscape where straight, white men are still thought of as the default and anything else is both exotic and suspicious. Much of this world as we know it was created by people born into positions of privilege who nevertheless feel themselves to have achieved greatness, and while that can be easy pickings for comedy, it creates a wildly unfair and often dangerous world for us all to navigate.

Beginning from that premise, Oluo explores a series of then-and-now pairings of stories about men who floundered their way into history. Buffalo Bill Cody made himself into a mythic figure by fabricating an outsize role in a battle he was merely present for, then mythologizing it into a literal stage show. His actual achievements included the mass slaughter of so many bison they were nearly rendered extinct, followed eventually by contrition and efforts at species conservation for which he was deemed a hero. To this day he is remembered fondly in large part for things that simply are not true.

Cody’s modern day counterparts here are the Bundy family, whose illegal cattle grazing turned into a dangerous showdown with the Bureau of Land Management and, later, a deeply weird standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Charged with multiple crimes, Cliven Bundy’s sons were acquitted and fell ass-backwards into lucrative public speaking work. Members of the Hammond family, whose fights with the BLM led to the event in Oregon, were sentenced to five years in prison, only to turn around and receive pardons from President Trump and the restoration of their grazing rights. Their actions have done significant environmental damage, but they are lauded as folk heroes and patriots.

A lot of this is damning and can be uncomfortable reading for white people, but it’s also—and I feel weird even typing this—highly entertaining to read. A chapter on male feminism and its failings sets a wild historical story against a blazing takedown of liberal appeals to focus on “ordinary Americans” while never specifying who exactly they are (hint: they are white). The histories here are described with just enough detail to bring them to life, then artfully connected to their modern counterparts; if you read one and fail to see the link, go back and review the introduction. They are almost all examples of an unfair system working exactly as intended.

“Mediocre” is not a book to read because you hate men and are looking for supporting evidence. The revolution it suggests is one that recognizes excellence, rather than tuning it out because it is female or queer or non-white. Our media’s continual hand-wringing over a working-class white guy in a mythical midwestern diner each election season makes it seem as though his opinion is the only one that counts, and as often as not, it really is. When that changes, everything does.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2021

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