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Alison Stewart: When writer Sarah Hagi tweeted in 2015, "Lord give me the confidence of a mediocre white man," it landed on T-shirts, mugs, and even protest signs. It also struck a chord, not because it was revelatory, but because it was so very familiar for many, many people. In her new book, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, Ijeoma Oluo examines the damage done by centric policy, emotional well-being, societal norms around one group. She makes the case that white male mediocrity isn't confined to one political party or one part of the country or in one era of history. It is baked into the cake.

In the introduction of Mediocre, she writes, "What I'm saying is that white male mediocrity is a baseline, the dominant narrative and that everything in our society is centered around preserving white male power regardless of white male skill or talent." In its review, Publishers Weekly writes, "Erudite, yet accessible, grounded in careful research as well as Oluo's personal experience of racism and misogyny, this is an essential reckoning with race, sex, and power in America." Oluo has been writing about these issues for years and her first book, So You Want to Talk About Race, was on many anti-racist reading lists this summer, which puts the book back on the bestseller list and now you can add this one to your syllabus as well. Ijeoma, welcome.

Ijeoma Oluo: Hi.

Alison: At the end of the book, you write that this thesis hit you like a bolt of lightning. Where and when was that?

Ijeoma: I would say it was probably the beginning of 2018. I was in a writing retreat for women and we were supposed to be getting distance and space. What we ended up talking a lot about the whole time were these white dudes and trying to figure them out because they were impacting so much of our life and our work. It was in the middle of this that I realized we need to start telling the story of how we got here and be really honest about how we all play a part in this.

Alison: Yes, you do a really great job of creating a historical arc for us to help us bring us along. You write about Buffalo Bill Cody, it's how you start the book, whose Wild West shows captivated audiences across the country with their stories of his daring, stories which you point out were either heavily embellished, shall we say, or just made up. Why was that a good starting point for your book?

Ijeoma: I think that was an experience. When I first started really learning about Bill Cody, it really stuck with me as I'm walking through these museums dedicated to him, towns dedicated to him, and realizing, "This narrative isn't for me. There is a whole story that's shaping generations, that has shaped generations." I thought it was important to start with talking about this story because the book is about story. One of the greatest stories of American manhood are around these men like Buffalo Bill Cody, talking about what really was behind it and the violence that these stories that can seem harmless can really bring to society for multiple generations. It just felt like a really good place to start.

Alison: He earned the nickname by killing off bison in the West, but it's interesting why the US government was trying to get rid of the bison. Would you explain that?

Ijeoma: Yes. It's really horrific. In the beginning, you were hunting for food, and Bill Cody first started hunting to feed railroad workers, but when it became obvious that Indigenous nations were going to be wherever the buffalo were, then it became a strategy to really starve them out by killing their main food source and really to force people out of the Plains so that they could continue to build railroads and expand through that territory. He was part of this horrific campaign where they basically loaded white tourists from Europe and from the East Coast with weapons to just shoot these majestic creatures from the train and leave their bodies to rot. It brought tens of millions of buffalo down to just a few hundred in just a few years. He became famous. The fame came from killing thousands of buffalo in a matter of weeks by himself. It was a bragging right that was really not only the decimation of the buffalo population but an act of genocide against Indigenous people.

Alison: And this image of this strong white man subduing beast and native people was a big part of the image that, quite frankly, Theodore Roosevelt projected. When you think about these men at that time, what impact does that even have on our politics today?

Ijeoma: That we still kind of fall for the same model that worked for Roosevelt. He went West and came back strong and had these stories of [unintelligible 00:06:07] and he became an everyman. He became someone that you wanted to have a beer with. That's the same way people thought about George W. Bush. It's the same way that that machismo, that idea [sound cut] he's in the dirt has nothing -- it's completely remote from actual skills and qualification as a leader of our government, but it becomes this idea of manhood. For some reason, this idea of manhood automatically equals leadership.

Alison: My guest is Ijeoma Oluo. Would you say your last name for me? I've been practicing all morning and I can't get my mouth around it.

Ijeoma: It's Oluo.

Alison: Oluo. Can I try again? Ijeoma Oluo?

Ijeoma: Yes.

Alison: Okay, thank you. I really appreciate it. I want to get it right. Ijeoma Oluo, the name of her book is Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. It's so interesting because I think a lot of us watched after 2016 and network news people flooded the middle of the country wanting to take the temperature of angry white men on the right who perhaps saw something in Donald Trump that gave them hope or made them feel confident and comfortable again.

I really appreciate in your book that you take the left a task as well. You talk a lot about in the book, and it's really interesting about Bernie Bros, this typical young white man who during the presidential run would angrily defend Bernie Sanders no matter what from any criticism, from any attack at all. What was it about the way Sanders spoke about these issues that allowed this sector of his supporters to feel entitled to behave this way?

Ijeoma: Yes. It was really interesting for me, of course, as a Black woman watching this unfold and often, like many other Black women who were speaking politically at the time, being a target of this. Basically, it was interesting to see that it was hard sometimes to tell the difference between the two. You would have to go through and click on someone's profile on social media to figure out who was insulting you, whether it was Trump supporter or Sanders supporter.

I think it's important to recognize that this mediocrity I talked about doesn't have a political affiliation. It really is so ingrained, this idea that white men will be centered, that it can cause you to betray your ideals, but it's also important to recognize we play into that. There were a lot of requests for Sanders to become a more effective leader. Many people were excited about him. I was excited about him, but we wanted him to start paying attention to more issues that were facing the Black community or other communities of color or facing women.

That reluctance to not to decenter white men not only stopped him from connecting with these groups that he really needed to have support him but also made him less effective in his overall goals for economic equality because when you can't address the reasons why particular groups are facing the issues, the economic issues they're facing, you will not be effective. The violence, the vitriol that came forth immediately was such a betrayal of these values that you understand how deep-seated the idea is that regardless of political party, if you're a white man, you shouldn't have to work harder. All Sanders had to do was appeal to white men and it was seen as an insult that he would be required to actually consider the needs of people who weren't white men.

Alison: Yes, you really take Bernie to task on the way that he would always reframe an issue in terms of class rather than really addressing race or gender. How does that end up often centering white people in the political debate?

Ijeoma: It was interesting to see because what you would see when there was this request, and we saw this after, of course, when Bernie didn't win the nomination in 2016, there was this pushback saying, "We're going to lose because we focus too much on women too much in people of color." The idea was really, we can't effectively look at these issues if we don't broaden our focus. It meant that time and time again, there was this coded language that consistently reaffirmed that American normal everyday people, these words, were white men.

You would see this framing of, "Yes, of course, it matters what happens to women. Yes, it matters what happens to the LGBTQ community. Yes, it matters, what happens to people of color," but we also have to we get everyday Americans, as if we aren't everyday Americans, but that's how centered white men are, that you can just call their needs American, and then have all these political spectrums within American issues, and we are always the outliers. It ends up becoming incredibly ineffective if you are actually looking to solve economic issues because there are reasons why populations of color will tend to be more economically oppressed than other populations that need to be addressed specifically.

If you keep saying, "No, let's not look at this, we're looking at ordinary Americans," and you brace the existence of all these other groups, you're never actually going to get to an effective solution, but then the whole debate became, "Do you support these ordinary Americans, which are people on the left, or these ordinary Americans, people on the right?" They were always talking about white men.

Alison: You talk about Joe Biden and the busing issue because I know a lot of people remember Kamala Harris. She really struck a nerve with Joe Biden about busing during a primary debate in June of 2019. You go into detail about how then-Senator Biden was on both sides of the busing issue as a new senator in the '70s. How did Senator Biden of that time try to explain to people that he was both for and against busing?

Ijeoma: It was quite the tortured explanation. I had to read so many times before I can fully wrap my head around it. Basically, he was saying that he was for busing where desegregation was done on purpose and against it where it was done on accident, basically. The accident, of course, it doesn't exist. We don't have racial segregation by accident in this country, but it was a way of basically saying there are bad, real racist areas that need to be corrected, and then there's places where just magically white people live in one area and Black people live in another, and the segregation that results in the North is fine.

It was really a way to remove the Northern cities from any real scrutiny around why their cities looked the way they did, why their school districts looked the way it did, and of course, just to get him reelected. He was facing a lot of backlash from Northern whites who were really scared about what it would mean when real policies to integrate schools would hit their areas.

Alison: How does this fit into your thesis?

Ijeoma: A lot of it was one, it's important to recognize that it really undercut the stated morals that Biden had. It really caused him to betray the Black population that helped get him elected, that he still banks from today. It still leaves him to this day in this place where he has to shift and say he believes one thing or another. He's still using that same explanation for his crusade against the busing to this day. It means that he has to reframe it consistently. Instead of looking at effective policy to help these schools, what happened then was this whole crusade that he wants to appease a white population that was scared of change, that was scared of diversity and equity. It meant that it really undercut the schools that he was supposed to represent and the neighbors he was supposed to represent. The schools that had worked so hard to desegregate are now just as segregated as ever. It means that students of color, there are still lawsuits going on in where he was senator where Black parents were saying, "We're still under-educating my children. We still haven't gotten the equal education we need." It shows time and time again that the promises that were made, which were there would be a better way, another way, they don't exist.

What's happening is just catering time and time and time again to the fear of change and growth in white communities that things like desegregation would bring, and instead of effectively looking at what can we do to improve all of these schools, instead it is all of these poor students, all these students of color, we're going to just leave them in subpar schools to protect this idea of white exclusion and white supremacy. It really did harm multiple generations of students of color.

Alison: Today, Joe Biden is on the cover of Time Magazine as Person of the Year, but so is Kamala Harris. When you think about that, does that give you hope that they didn't just choose Biden?

Ijeoma: [laughs] No, I don't know how we get -- I feel like they couldn't have just chosen Biden. I do feel like nothing screams mediocrity like a candidate who should have won in a landslide and didn't quite, who hasn't actually done anything yet other than win this election, being the person of the year, while we have protesters out in the street fighting police brutality, while we have doctors fighting to save lives in a pandemic. To me, it's such a mediocrity that I think politically, they couldn't be that blatant. I really think that's why it looks the way it does.

But I don't look at this and go, "Well, that's an example things are changing." Yes, okay, well, I guess we're going to celebrate something that hasn't even happened yet. We're going to celebrate this world-changing that hasn't changed yet.

Alison: I got excited by the idea that, when we think about back on this election, she's kind of a big deal.

Ijeoma: She is. She absolutely is.

Alison: [unintelligible 00:16:36]

Ijeoma: If it was just her, I think that would be amazing, because I do think it means a lot to see a Black woman in this space. But I would love to see the celebration of what we support her in being able to do in this administration and being able to do, instead of just saying, "This election is done, and that's the success. This is the Person of the Year." I feel like there's so many other stories of people actually working and making really important change and fighting desperately to save lives that I would love to see upheld and that we look forward to instead.

Alison: My guest Ijeoma Oluo. The name of the book is Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. After the break, we'll talk a little bit about the glass cliff and why you should be aware of some feminist men, that's after the break.

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This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm back with Ijeoma Oluo. The name of her book is Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. You also give us a really great historical arc about women in the workplace from the 1930s, the 1940s, through World War II, when there's a sudden need to get women in the workplace, and then they are just dismissed afterward, up until today. It's very interesting to see the arc. You bring us up to Silicon Valley, which I think is just an incredibly interesting example of all of this. You write about the glass cliff, a lot of people know about the glass ceiling. Please explain the glass cliff, and how to really successful women end up falling off of it.

Ijeoma: Yes, so the glass cliff is to describe a phenomenon that researchers actually found, which was when women and people of color are selected to leadership positions in companies. And what they found was that there is no time where a woman or a person of color is more likely to be picked to either be a head of a board or a head of a company than when a company is failing. Once that company is failing, they're put in this position, and then when they can't succeed, they're more likely to be replaced by white men. The moral of the story is: see, women and people of color can't fix this.

It's this idea that women and people of color are set up to fail in leadership, and really it's a no-win situation. If you have, you know, on a fluke, you're able to turn this sinking ship around and really save this company, then you are deemed an exception. These studies have shown that people don't actually change their opinion about women or people of color in leadership even when they're successful. You're really brought in when everything else has been tried, you're a hail mary, and when you fail, they go, "See, this is why you shouldn't be in this spot."

Time and time again, we see these high-profile situations when women and people of color are brought in to lead companies in trouble, and they aren't supported, they aren't given tools for success, and then when they don't do well, then we say, "See, they weren't cut for the job." It really impacts the way in which we think about leadership in business, even though no one asks, "How did these companies get to this point? Who was leading the companies to this point of last resort in the first place?" It's always remembered that these women especially were not able to turn things around.

Alison: You interviewed Ellen Pao for the book, and she's named the CEO of Reddit. People probably remember this, this was in the news quite a bit. She was named the CEO. The former CEO had left because he had a reputation -- It was a mess. He was a mess. It was a mess: racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism. What did the glass cliff look like for her?

Ijeoma: It looked like a couple of things for her. One was when she came in and started recognizing all of the things that were stopping Reddit from growing, appealing to a broader audience, all these things that they said were their goals, there was an extreme resistance to any change that she was putting forth. Not only resistance but an immediate backlash. It really looked like mods of these Reddit threads, and Reddit really made of these popular threads, that's what keeps Reddit going, protesting her making changes, and shutting down threads. Literally willing to sink their own spaces in order to bring her down. People pushing back against any technological advances, process changes she was trying to make. It ended up being this mutiny against her that was filled with racism and sexism, that was some of the most vile things being said about her.

Then, in the end, it looked like the board giving her user goals that were just impossible. It was basically a message sent, "If you can't meet this impossible goal, you're not fit for this job." The writing was really on the wall for her. What was interesting, of course, was after she ended up leaving, those goals still weren't met and yet, the protests died away. The changes that she made were not unraveled and yet, people stopped throwing fits about it. It was really the thought that there was a woman of color in the space changing things that threatened what was a predominantly white male space.

Alison: During the course of writing this book, did you ever come to a conclusion which was a more toxic combination, the white and mediocrity part or the male and mediocrity part?

Ijeoma: As a Black woman, of course, what often I see the most is the white mediocrity part because it comes to me and often because white women can join that force when they decide that their best chance to power is their proximity to white men, and so then it can become much more about race, but what I think I found out more and more working on this book is how you really can't separate the two. You really cannot separate the patriarchy from white supremacy in this country because the main goal of it is to uphold this idea of white male power, and anything that threatens it, even white women, will be a target.

Alison: I think every person of color woman has been through this. You've been told, I've been told, "I got into that college because you're Black. You got that job because you're Black. You got a job because you're a Black woman," et cetera, et cetera. When you really boil down to it, what's behind those charges?

Ijeoma: What's behind those charges is really the fact that there's the assumption that things were meant for white men, and so anything that varies from that is an exception, is a change, is an aberration. College was meant to be for white men. No one looks and says, "Oh, you have too many white men in this college. There must be some program going on. You must be getting some favoritism." It's whenever things differ from that that it becomes an exception. It's really the way in which we have centered stories of success and prosperity and security in this country around white men. That means that whenever we put efforts forth to give the same to women or people of color, that it ends up looking like a special program, something different, something undeserved, and no one questions why the status quo has always been the way it is because we just call it normal.

We have a real problem in our society where we don't mention white. We don't say, "As a white man, this is what you can expect in life." We don't say, "This is a white male perspective." We don't say when we're reading articles, think pieces written by a white man that this is a white male perspective. That's a normal perspective. Then I, as a writer, am writing a Black perspective. Because of that, anything different seems like it's hyper-focused. There's studies that have shown that wherever we hit about 30% to 35% representation for women or people of color, that oftentimes the majority will say, "Oh, now the majority is women or people of color," because it's so used to normalizing their own experience.

Alison: My guest is Ijeoma Oluo. The name of the book is Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. It reminded me of Anna Julia Cooper used to say, "Not the boys less, just the girls more," about education. I thought it was really interesting. Your book, you give a little bit of a, "Everybody watch out for the male feminist coming down proclaiming to be so much in solidarity and in support." What are some red flags?

Ijeoma: There are quite a few. The red flags that we've seen throughout history of these kinds of white men who claim that they're on our side and then not quite are one: what they expect to get out of it? Do they expect praise? Do they expect to be centered? Is it their journey and their story that this becomes about? Do they over-focus on what money we'll get out of this?

I think that's where I am always concerned is this appeal, "Men, you may not get what you're going to-- how you'll benefit from feminism, but here's how," because it limits them to where it's not about them. Some of the signs we see are people who centered themselves, who want their voice to be heard, who think that it is really about their growth and their journey and their benefit and less actually about the women that they claim to be allied with. We see it time and time again. It's not always something with ill intent. It's just often people who are so used to being centered, don't recognize that this wouldn't center them too. Why wouldn't it be about them?

We see this in film. How often have you seen these films that are like one white man's growth journey, and he's being taught by women and people of color how to be a better person. It's never actually about the humanity of the people who are teaching him. It's about him becoming a better, stronger, more heroic person. A lot of times you will have white men who enter feminist movements expecting that same arc, that same character arc, and it to be about their growth, and us looking at them and being like, "Wow." When it's not, what we see often then is a backlash, that they assume that the movement must be broken, or wrong, or it's divisive because it just doesn't center them, and they're not used to it.

Alison: Anyone who follows you on social media knows a couple of things. One, your eye shadow game is always on point, it's impressive, and so good. And that you take a lot of heat really in horrible ways. You've been doxed. You were doxed recently. You write about it in the book. I don't even want to think about what some of the outcomes could have been for you and for your children. I mean this is just truly from my heart, do you have protection? How do you protect yourself?

Ijeoma: I am possibly battling how much of my life I want to give way to fear. I've always been a fairly open person. It's been really difficult to have to be less open with my life and where I live, but we have some protection strategies in place. But mostly, I just have to remember, I started doing this work, I dedicated all of my work to this after Trayvon Martin was killed. Because I recognize how inherently unsafe we are as Black people and how inherently unsafe Black women are in this country. That means that even if I'm not doing this work, I'm not safe so I have to just keep fighting. That's what drives me is the fact that at least I can be hurt. The worst possible scenario comes for Black people every day, every day in this country, and that no one hears them, and at least I can be heard, at least I can speak out. It does make me a bit of a target, but we try to be careful. We try to be safe. I try to be responsible, especially as a mother, but there is no guarantee, and there wasn't a guarantee even before I started writing.

Alison: You strike an optimistic note at the end of the book. How did you come to wanting to leave us feeling like there's possibility for change?

Ijeoma: I think that's the only reason why I do this work. It's painful work. It's so painful to spend years researching brutality and cruelty and hatred. I only do it because I think it can make a difference because I know we have the capability for change. I love people. I believe in people, especially as a mother, I look at my children, and I watch these beings grow and learn, and we're all capable of that. Otherwise, I'd be writing the murder mystery that I really want to write one day.

I wouldn't be spending my time doing this because it is hard, but I love people, and I believe in people, and I don't believe that there is anything inherently in a single person that would prevent them from growth and change. It's about the will, it's about imagination, it's about realizing there could be more than that. I want to be a part of that faith that we need to carry through and make that change.

Alison: The name of the book is Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. My guest has been Ijeoma Oluo. Thank you so much for being with us and giving us so much time today.

Ijeoma: Thank you. It was a real pleasure.

 

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