I’m a natural to review Ijeoma Oluo’s new book, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America (Seal Press, 2020).

I am White, male, American, and when I taught at the University of Texas at Austin, I routinely joked that “the secret to my success is that I’m mediocre, and I know it.”

That comment came in conversations with students about inflated faculty egos, partly as a caution to myself. In universities, the coin of the realm is being a big thinker with original ideas. But most of us aren’t big thinkers, and original ideas are rare. Rather than being satisfied with being competent—a hard enough standard to meet—professors too often puff themselves up, a weakness to which White guys are especially vulnerable. My quip wasn’t the result of a lack of self-confidence; I was simply suggesting that an honest self-assessment helps one do useful work.

If “mediocre” seems unkind, how about “ordinary”? I’m not special, but I live in a culture that designates people who look like me as the standard. A White supremacist and patriarchal society (we’ll […]