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emma's Reviews > Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power
by
by
emma's review
bookshelves: non-ya, nonfiction, authors-of-color, project-black-history-month, unpopular-opinion, 3-stars, reviewed
Dec 05, 2020
bookshelves: non-ya, nonfiction, authors-of-color, project-black-history-month, unpopular-opinion, 3-stars, reviewed
Sometimes I have an unpopular opinion so heinous I expect to wake up to find my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ account deactivated.
This is one of those times.
Please, at this point, navigate away from this. Maybe start trying to guess my password, I don’t know. All I’m sure of is we all should get out of here as soon as possible.
I wish I were normal, with a functioning brain, so I could skip writing this review entirely.
But I am not, so here goes.
It seems like this book was written with the conclusion in mind before any of the research (which is affirmed by backstory in the introduction).
A group of women at a writing retreat got together, had one of those conversations that all women are familiar with, when they find themselves in a room without men, or with a couple of neutral parties, and start talking sh*t. The conclusion was foregone: White men have historically been able to do more with less.
I’m left wondering, though - is this a convincing argument, knowing that it was decided upon before it was researched?
This was a hard issue for me to determine, for the most part. On the one hand, I agree already with the background logic, and fall in line with Oluo’s points and politics by and large, but on the other, I wouldn’t have so much as written a thesis for an English 101 paper without having seen first if the points fell in my favor.
A lot of this comes down to lived experience, and I am by no means saying that lived experience is not valid evidence. It is. Most of this book is well argued.
But sometimes it seems that Oluo wedges more large-scale examples into her thesis without determining if they fit there in truth.
For most of the book, as mentioned, this was fine, as I agreed with the points made for the most part. But then the Bernie Sanders chapter came around.
This is the only section in which I wasn’t already on Oluo’s side, so I will be reviewing it critically and in detail to reflect how this book might feel to someone who disagrees with other sections. (The question of who this book is for - whether it's to convince people who don't agree or as the kind of newly popular soothing-justified-anger fodder for people who do - is interesting to me, but a whole other topic.)
For context, I voted for Bernie Sanders twice - the first time at 18, during my first presidential election, very enthusiastically, and the second time at 22, less enthused but still feeling he was the best candidate. I promise, even knowing this, I came into this section with an open mind - I do think there are valid criticisms of Bernie, especially when it comes to his ability to talk about race in the 2016 election.
My first sense that something was off came in the first pages of this chapter, when the author introduced her reticent feelings about the senator as having come from a day on Twitter when, following a tweet she made about a dream Bernie appeared in, some of his supporters harassed her. This is obviously unacceptable, but the obfuscation of a politician’s goals or integrity or actual views via their teenage supporters� always rubs me the wrong way.
The next came in this quote:
"When [Sanders] was asked about how to keep voters focused on the issues in the midst of Trump scandals, he replied, 'I mean, I think we've got to work in two ways. Number one, we have got to take on Trump's attacks against the environment, against women, against Latinos and blacks and people in the gay community, we've got to fight back every day on those issues. But equally important, or more important: We have got to focus on bread-and-butter issues that matter so much to ordinary Americans.'
"Oh man, fuck this. Seriously? Who exactly are these 'ordinary Americans' whose issues are more important than the destruction of our environment and the systemic racism and sexism that are literally crushing women and people of color in this country? Hint: They don't look like me."
This is so frustrating to me. The author introduces this quote as Bernie responding to a question about how to keep us focused on issues, SEPARATE FROM TRUMP COMMENTS, and then immediately, using brush-off language, ignores that context.
Many people forgot that in 2020, a large debate in the Democratic party was just how much to focus on Trump. But that was the context there. Taking Bernie’s argument that we have to focus on the real issues, not Trump’s comments about them, and saying that is evidence that he doesn’t care about those issues…to me, bizarre!
The same explanation gap occurs later on: “When in 2016 Trump said that women who have abortions should be punished, Sanders replied that his remarks were a ‘distraction� from the ‘real issues facing America.� To many women (and anyone with a uterus, regardless of gender), especially on the left, the assault on reproductive rights was a serious issue facing America.�
It’s his remarks that are the distraction, not the issue itself. The issue is a part of the very same lineup of “real issues� referenced before.
Later, the author argues the following: “In the end, 12 percent of Sanders supporters ended up supporting Trump in the general election. When surveyed, almost half of those Sanders supporters turned Trump voters said they disagreed that white people have disadvantages in the United States, whereas only about 5 percent of Clinton voters disagreed that white people have advantages.�
Ignoring that that would make about 5 percent of Sanders voters, and ignoring that this is not how elections work, and ignoring that the the author cites notes that 12 percent of Republican primary voters voted for Hillary in the general, and ignoring that it also says 25 percent of Hillary 2008 voters voted for McCain, and ignoring that there is so much bias here, and ignoring that that last 5 percent number has no cited source, I found that said 22% of Hillary voters said that white people don’t benefit even a fair amount from advantages Black people don’t have.
I am white, but I am a pro-choice woman, and being dismissed from my Bernie support is so frustrating. In the wake of so many POC Bernie supporters in 2019 discussing the pain of being left out of the movement via this rhetoric, I don’t understand how you in good faith ignore them to keep making this argument.
This essay will obliquely reference the young women, Black people, Latinx people, and others who supported Bernie in huge majorities, and then act as though that doesn’t matter. Bad-faith writing like this makes me question the believability of the rest of the book.
For goodness� sake, the author quotes ROBIN DIANGELO in this essay, a white woman for taking over movements, on the idea of white men taking over the movement. And even DiAngelo says, “Well, we need them,� an excerpt of her response that is unsurprisingly not the focus Oluo takes on.
This chapter tears down Bernie and his supporters, sometimes fairly and sometimes not, but it fails to note the actual work done by the senator and this same group in the wake of 2016.
There is a chapter that lauds Rashida Tlaib, AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley, but fails to note the role of Bernie supporters in electing them and working to elect other working class people, people of color, women, and underrepresented populations, through Justice Democrats, the organization that elected these four and three other people of color to national leadership in 2018 alone.
It was founded by and is made up of former Bernie campaign leadership.
I know it seems crazy to focus this much on one chapter, and in many ways it is. But when you’re reading nonfiction and you stumble across a misquoted fact, or a simple error, it creates a sense of doubt that is hard to shake for the rest of the book.
I’m no expert on most of the topics in this, and I learned from some of them, but I’m a politics obsessive who cut her teeth on Bernie. And the places where this section didn’t match up with facts made it hard for me to trust the rest of the book did.
Bottom line: I hope no one read this. If they did, I’m sorry!
-----------------
tbr review
what book could sound better than this
-----------------
reading books by Black authors for Black History Month!
book 1: caste
book 2: business not as usual
book 3: the color purple
book 4: the parking lot attendant
book 5: kindred
book 6: wrapped up in you
book 7: the boyfriend project
book 8: a song below water
book 9: filthy animals
book 10: passing
book 11: seven days in june
book 12: ayiti
book 13: notes of a native son
book 14: mediocre
This is one of those times.
Please, at this point, navigate away from this. Maybe start trying to guess my password, I don’t know. All I’m sure of is we all should get out of here as soon as possible.
I wish I were normal, with a functioning brain, so I could skip writing this review entirely.
But I am not, so here goes.
It seems like this book was written with the conclusion in mind before any of the research (which is affirmed by backstory in the introduction).
A group of women at a writing retreat got together, had one of those conversations that all women are familiar with, when they find themselves in a room without men, or with a couple of neutral parties, and start talking sh*t. The conclusion was foregone: White men have historically been able to do more with less.
I’m left wondering, though - is this a convincing argument, knowing that it was decided upon before it was researched?
This was a hard issue for me to determine, for the most part. On the one hand, I agree already with the background logic, and fall in line with Oluo’s points and politics by and large, but on the other, I wouldn’t have so much as written a thesis for an English 101 paper without having seen first if the points fell in my favor.
A lot of this comes down to lived experience, and I am by no means saying that lived experience is not valid evidence. It is. Most of this book is well argued.
But sometimes it seems that Oluo wedges more large-scale examples into her thesis without determining if they fit there in truth.
For most of the book, as mentioned, this was fine, as I agreed with the points made for the most part. But then the Bernie Sanders chapter came around.
This is the only section in which I wasn’t already on Oluo’s side, so I will be reviewing it critically and in detail to reflect how this book might feel to someone who disagrees with other sections. (The question of who this book is for - whether it's to convince people who don't agree or as the kind of newly popular soothing-justified-anger fodder for people who do - is interesting to me, but a whole other topic.)
For context, I voted for Bernie Sanders twice - the first time at 18, during my first presidential election, very enthusiastically, and the second time at 22, less enthused but still feeling he was the best candidate. I promise, even knowing this, I came into this section with an open mind - I do think there are valid criticisms of Bernie, especially when it comes to his ability to talk about race in the 2016 election.
My first sense that something was off came in the first pages of this chapter, when the author introduced her reticent feelings about the senator as having come from a day on Twitter when, following a tweet she made about a dream Bernie appeared in, some of his supporters harassed her. This is obviously unacceptable, but the obfuscation of a politician’s goals or integrity or actual views via their teenage supporters� always rubs me the wrong way.
The next came in this quote:
"When [Sanders] was asked about how to keep voters focused on the issues in the midst of Trump scandals, he replied, 'I mean, I think we've got to work in two ways. Number one, we have got to take on Trump's attacks against the environment, against women, against Latinos and blacks and people in the gay community, we've got to fight back every day on those issues. But equally important, or more important: We have got to focus on bread-and-butter issues that matter so much to ordinary Americans.'
"Oh man, fuck this. Seriously? Who exactly are these 'ordinary Americans' whose issues are more important than the destruction of our environment and the systemic racism and sexism that are literally crushing women and people of color in this country? Hint: They don't look like me."
This is so frustrating to me. The author introduces this quote as Bernie responding to a question about how to keep us focused on issues, SEPARATE FROM TRUMP COMMENTS, and then immediately, using brush-off language, ignores that context.
Many people forgot that in 2020, a large debate in the Democratic party was just how much to focus on Trump. But that was the context there. Taking Bernie’s argument that we have to focus on the real issues, not Trump’s comments about them, and saying that is evidence that he doesn’t care about those issues…to me, bizarre!
The same explanation gap occurs later on: “When in 2016 Trump said that women who have abortions should be punished, Sanders replied that his remarks were a ‘distraction� from the ‘real issues facing America.� To many women (and anyone with a uterus, regardless of gender), especially on the left, the assault on reproductive rights was a serious issue facing America.�
It’s his remarks that are the distraction, not the issue itself. The issue is a part of the very same lineup of “real issues� referenced before.
Later, the author argues the following: “In the end, 12 percent of Sanders supporters ended up supporting Trump in the general election. When surveyed, almost half of those Sanders supporters turned Trump voters said they disagreed that white people have disadvantages in the United States, whereas only about 5 percent of Clinton voters disagreed that white people have advantages.�
Ignoring that that would make about 5 percent of Sanders voters, and ignoring that this is not how elections work, and ignoring that the the author cites notes that 12 percent of Republican primary voters voted for Hillary in the general, and ignoring that it also says 25 percent of Hillary 2008 voters voted for McCain, and ignoring that there is so much bias here, and ignoring that that last 5 percent number has no cited source, I found that said 22% of Hillary voters said that white people don’t benefit even a fair amount from advantages Black people don’t have.
I am white, but I am a pro-choice woman, and being dismissed from my Bernie support is so frustrating. In the wake of so many POC Bernie supporters in 2019 discussing the pain of being left out of the movement via this rhetoric, I don’t understand how you in good faith ignore them to keep making this argument.
This essay will obliquely reference the young women, Black people, Latinx people, and others who supported Bernie in huge majorities, and then act as though that doesn’t matter. Bad-faith writing like this makes me question the believability of the rest of the book.
For goodness� sake, the author quotes ROBIN DIANGELO in this essay, a white woman for taking over movements, on the idea of white men taking over the movement. And even DiAngelo says, “Well, we need them,� an excerpt of her response that is unsurprisingly not the focus Oluo takes on.
This chapter tears down Bernie and his supporters, sometimes fairly and sometimes not, but it fails to note the actual work done by the senator and this same group in the wake of 2016.
There is a chapter that lauds Rashida Tlaib, AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley, but fails to note the role of Bernie supporters in electing them and working to elect other working class people, people of color, women, and underrepresented populations, through Justice Democrats, the organization that elected these four and three other people of color to national leadership in 2018 alone.
It was founded by and is made up of former Bernie campaign leadership.
I know it seems crazy to focus this much on one chapter, and in many ways it is. But when you’re reading nonfiction and you stumble across a misquoted fact, or a simple error, it creates a sense of doubt that is hard to shake for the rest of the book.
I’m no expert on most of the topics in this, and I learned from some of them, but I’m a politics obsessive who cut her teeth on Bernie. And the places where this section didn’t match up with facts made it hard for me to trust the rest of the book did.
Bottom line: I hope no one read this. If they did, I’m sorry!
-----------------
tbr review
what book could sound better than this
-----------------
reading books by Black authors for Black History Month!
book 1: caste
book 2: business not as usual
book 3: the color purple
book 4: the parking lot attendant
book 5: kindred
book 6: wrapped up in you
book 7: the boyfriend project
book 8: a song below water
book 9: filthy animals
book 10: passing
book 11: seven days in june
book 12: ayiti
book 13: notes of a native son
book 14: mediocre
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Reading Progress
October 25, 2020
– Shelved
February 16, 2022
–
Started Reading
February 18, 2022
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Finished Reading
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message 1:
by
Clare
(new)
Feb 18, 2022 08:11PM
I saw on the author's bio she's an Internet Yeller. I want that job when I grow up 😆
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Clare wrote: "I saw on the author's bio she's an Internet Yeller. I want that job when I grow up 😆"i believe in you!!!
excited to read your thoughts on this one!
I didn't read the Bernie section to be dismissive of all Bernie supporters but rather, a more targeted discussion of the smaller group of "Bernie Bros" who would rather vote for Trump than switch their support behind HRC. (Just from my perspective as another politics-obsessed, twitter-refreshing person!) I found that it was a fair critique of an important phenomenon that contributed to Trump being elected, and politicians and their supporters are never insulated from criticism so long as we want this political system to keep working.
Avery wrote: "excited to read your thoughts on this one!"up in all their length!
Virginia wrote: "I didn't read the Bernie section to be dismissive of all Bernie supporters but rather, a more targeted discussion of the smaller group of "Bernie Bros" who would rather vote for Trump than switch t..."this is fair, though i don't think the author was truthful in indicating the scope of this phenomenon! the numbers aren't really there to support it, and the misappropriation of the quotes really settled that for me. of course no one is insulated from criticism, i totally agree, myself included!
2 things:1) very good review. I read an interview with the author a while ago when the book was quite new, and although I thought her overarching point was both logical and relatively consistent with anecdotal evidence I'd encountered, she didn't seem to have quite enough hard evidence to write an entire book on it. After reading your review, I think this may have made a better reflective essay than a book.
2) I think you've tried to link to some stuff in your review, and I'm pretty sure I heard Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ no longer allows links to external sites within reviews. Perhaps this is not true, but either way, the links aren't working for me :(
Emma wrote: "2 things:1) very good review. I read an interview with the author a while ago when the book was quite new, and although I thought her overarching point was both logical and relatively consistent w..."
1) thank you sm! this is what i found to be the case, which is also why i'm so curious who this book is for. if it's intended to convince anyone who doesn't agree already i think it's fair to say it isn't successful in that
2) turns out i just formatted them wrong lol. they should work now!!!
CJ wrote: "This is 100% not the point of your review at all, so my apologies� but I thought you were Canadian. Like, I was sure. I’m so confused now. Sorry, incredibly off topic."hahahaha no one ever knows i'm american, i take it as a compliment
I do like the fact that you feel mediocre about a book called Mediocre.
Marije wrote: "I do like the fact that you feel mediocre about a book called Mediocre."that is pleasing
While it can make sense to get stuck on a quote or statistic that is incorrect. This point takes away from the overarching point that this book is about white men and power. Stating that Bernie and Bernie's fans helped get QUALIFIED, CREATIVE, and IMPACTFUL WOC elected in your review shows the impact of putting white men on pedestals. Bernie has some really good points but overall if his points are surface level-helping POC and he puts the rest of his energy into economic issues without thoroughly talking about how they majority affect POC isn’t making real historic change but once again surface-level change. We do not need to pat white people like that on the back and give them our devoted soul for doing a lot less than the bare minimum. Your take screams -white person who feels uncomfortable with race-based politics when we don’t over hype up the old white guy who is using his political power without really recognizing how he could even get the platform to become a famous politician. He- who focuses on “radical takes� without mentioning race unless he wants to be an opportunist and try to get votes with a predominantly POC audience-. If you guys are going to hide behind mediocre white guys you should really hide your problematic thinking better.
But you know just my take on your mediocre white take on a mediocre white man in a book called MEDIOCRE written by an AMAZING BLACK WOMEN.
Just my little 15-year-old black girl takes so�
I’m going to get back to listening to Tyler the creator while I wear my overalls and NO JUSTICE NO PEACE t-shirt at my predominantly white high school.
And to all my WOC reading this, have a great day, don’t forget to love your Hair, do you, and don’t be afraid to go against mediocre takes.
JUST THINK ON THIS FOR 37 seconds Emma and everyone who agrees with them.
There were many famous POC intellectuals that supported Bernie: Adolph Reid, Cornell West, Gerald Horne, and Briahna Joy Gray was his press secretary. So often centralist democrats have placated to POC by placing them in power only to perpetuate the same horrible hegemony (developed and maintained mostly by white men) that adversely affects POC. I don't know if Bernie would have vastly improved the live of POC but the policies he advocated for, more economic democracy, would. I look forward to reading this book, I'm sure there are points I'll agree with and some that I do not but that's the point of reading right?
I'm about in the middle of the book and I feel the same way about the Bernie chapter. My main problem was that she dismissed criticism of Hillary Clinton being a war monger. If you're paying attention at all, she is a war monger! She voted for and actively promoted an illegal war of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands of people and lit the whole region on fire. Talk about a mediocre white lady...
So why did you give this book three stars? Did you do it to avoid harassment and passive aggressive comments? Because as you can see, the virtuous mob will come after you anyway.
You right this review as if the entire book was merely a product of the author's conversation with other women at the writing retreat. That's ridiculous. This is clearly where the idea came from, but the rest of the book has clearly been researched and she makes a point to acknowledge her research assistants at the end of the book. To be honest, it felt like your feelings were so hurt at her pointing out the ways in which Bernie Sanders feel short that instead of accepting the many clear examples of this, you decided instead to assume that if she wasn't lauding Bernie, well, you just have to question her judgement on everything. And I bet you didn't even realise that in doing so you are proving the point of the book, which is that white men do not have to excel in order to be worshipped, because they're good deeds will be highly praised and their next steps will be brushed under the table, dismissed and forgotten.
I’m here to second Debbie’s comment above this. This review, while clear how much you view Bernie as an above average or outstanding white man, misses the forest for the trees of the book. It’s not that no white man can ever be praised or have an idea. This is not a book about any single white man. It’s a book about the system of white male power that is a manifestation of “the American dream�: that white men can always fail upwards in America and will take opportunities to consolidate power whenever they can. Even Bernie because it’s by design.
