Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America

Poor Southern whites had sold their souls for their sense of racial superiority, and for many, it was all they had. They would not let go easily.

White supremacy is, and has always been, a pyramid scheme.

Yes, poor Southern whites were low on the socioeconomic ladder, exploited by elite whites as the underpaid muscle holding the whip. But it was a ladder they intended to climb, and the top rung always stretched just out of reach.

While these sensationalized news stories keep many white people in fear, they also reinforce an aggrieved identity that gives a sense of community and belonging. White supremacy is just good business.

The concept of race in America was created for the subjugation of Black and brown bodies for the seeming benefit of white Americans. There are no pockets of America that are exempt from this. There is no liberal utopia that got a different memo.

The South fought the Civil War because it could not envision life without Black labor. It was a cause worth sacrificing hundreds of thousands of white Southern lives to.

Not all male feminists are shitty, but all of them—like all of us—have internalized misogyny that they are (or are not) working through.

A political movement that focuses on class and ignores the specific ways in which race determines financial health and well-being for people of color in this country will be a movement that maintains white supremacy, because it will not be able to identify or address the specific, race-based systems that are the main causes of inequality for people

White America does not need us merely for what we contribute to culture, science, or the arts. It needs us as an outlet for its rage.