Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

In the first 100 pages of “Mediocre” the book felt very different from Oluo’s acclaimed “So You Want to Talk About Race.” Oh, Ijeoma Oluo’s prose is still terrific (Why do I feel like Barney Fife in writing the word terrific?) Some will surely say it is in your face, but if her first book didn’t convince you of the need to be, or recent events haven’t made you yearn for her brand of indignation, well, I’m not sure what to tell you. Her prose energizes me at this point and I am an old white, former CEO white male who isn’t trying to use my praise for her for any kind of sexual, monetary, or political advantage. My admiration does not flow from the fact that she writes like (name your favorite author) but because she isn’t writing for me. She is writing for herself, and to her she is all about the truth, as brutal as it might be. (What can be more brutal than the truth at this moment in history.) Eventually, however, you realize that she is simply attacking the problem of structural racism (which she now refers to under the apt heading of ‘worked as designed’), both of which are very real, from a different angle. I won’t say if it is a better or worse angle, but, once again, she has chosen her timing well. And she is, once again, right on target. There are two themes of this book that resonated with me. The first is that the white male patriarchy isn’t really helping white males in the long run. In fact we suffer from it. And, in my opinion, we are laying the groundwork for our own loss of influence because we are allowing the ideologies that got us here to go so far off the rails that even the most bigoted amongst us will be forced to accept the absurdity of our current situation. The second theme has to do with the relative importance of “class politics” versus “identity politics.” As a former CEO I had come to sign on to the class politics side of the debate. Income and wealth inequality are at the heart of all other evils. It is, in fact, amazing to me that the pitchforks haven’t come out yet. Oluo, however, makes a convincing case that class injustice will never be resolved unless identity injustice is solved first. I believe she is right but that is a tough truth to behold simply because we can all see class injustice no matter which class we belong to, but identity injustice is difficult to truly comprehend outside of the identity compound we live within. Said differently, we will not achieve class equality until we achieve identity equality, any more than we can make a level and productive reservoir out of a raging river without a damn. And while we can all find fault with damns, they are effective at stopping both progress and destruction, but it is the latter that we must stop before the former can occur. One thing that this book has convinced me of is that identity politics is not a function of not seeing color or whatever other identity is at the heart of the current debate. We must see color. We must see race. Because otherwise color is too easy to dismiss and to rationalize away. The nature of words, given that they are merely symbols of human invention, makes it too easy for each of us to find verbal proxies to hide our true intent. Oluo offers a perfect example with the debate over school busing. On paper it sounded like the perfect way to integrate our schools. In practice, however, it failed miserably and our schools are probably more segregated today than they have ever been. Because the issue is not giving every child access to a good school, it is that we have good schools and bad schools, and a lot of the difference is explained by funding. So long as we fund the education of our children largely through real estate taxes and community income that will continue to be the case. School segregation, in other words, is merely a proxy for the racial discrimination that defines neighborhoods and school districts. Change the latter and the former will follow. Change identity and class will follow. The same, I am now convinced, with Oluo’s help, is true of income and wealth inequality, which I personally believe will ultimately bring down the economic infrastructure which has allowed me to live a very colorful life and to end it in relative comfort with virtually no debt. We must solve this disparity. And I fully support the sentiment of the founder of Boston’s famous Filene’s department store: “I don’t mind giving half of my income back to the American people in taxes; I took it all from them to begin with.” We won’t resolve that issue, however, until we resolve the identity politics that are its foundation. And, I admit, I didn’t fully understand that until I read both of Oluo’s insightful books. I’ve never met her or heard her speak. I do, however, hear her. The question now becomes, as I am sure she would ask, what will I do about it? A great read that we should all force ourselves to read, digest, and act upon.