Mediocre

★★★★

An eye opening read, with many anecdotes and factoids I had no idea about (18th Century governments paid for the scalp of native Americans — regardless of identity (Oluo), Destruction of the buffalo population was a genocidal tactic against native Americans (Oluo), Zoning and covenants were used to segregate and restrict POC real estate opportunities (Oluo), Women and POC were largely left out of Great Depression aid programs (Oluo), In the Great Depression, 1/3 of Mexican-Americans were coerced into leaving the country, 60% were US Citizens (Oluo), Redskin’s owner George Preston Marshall almost single-mindedly capitalized on and perpetuated racism (Oluo)).

In short, society has been constructed to provide every advantage to white men, often at the expense of POC and women. While this was explicit policy (to a much deeper extent than I realized) earlier in history, we still face the legacy of this deep-seated mindset today.

One criticism would be that yes there are a lot of problems, but they can’t be changed overnight with the current form of government we have. There has been enough political power opposed to progressive ideas that it simply wasn’t realistic to change much of this before. Now that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be changed or that people should try, and in fact they have and are. But some of the positions Oluo takes feel slightly ungenerous, kind of assuming it would have been possible to take less compromised positions. See Joe Biden has hypocritical stances on busing (Oluo), for example.

Now a lot of this is because our government structure protects a white minority that rules, and perhaps a more representative form of government would have made bigger changes sooner. But then the complaint should be with the form of government, not the individual actors within it, like Biden.

I suppose I’m left wondering what we should do about all of this as a society. If acceptance is the first step then just acknowledging this history and it’s continued impacts on the country today is a basic response. It does seem like Improved equality of representation is needed in US government could help address some of these issues. The rest will just have to come from people having their minds opened/changed in the “culture war”.

Thoughts

Will social equality involve boosting the disadvantaged, or redistributing the privilege pie?
Will the wealth gap ever be overcome entirely? Or do the privileged have too much of a head start?
Would it be accurate to say Native Americans had a genocide perpetrated against them?

Notes

Backlinks

More profound racism institutionalized in the past perpetuates a subtle and insidious racism today (Oluo)
- When we find systems with outputs that negatively affect people of color in a way or to a degree that they do not affect white people, we have a racist impact that can be tied to a racist cause. Often, that racism looks little like the proud hatred professed by the senators whom Biden worked with, and more like that of Biden’s white constituents, who couldn’t imagine a worse fate for their children than having to go to the same schools that Black children had always attended. Or it looks like the racism of Biden himself, who, in catering to the racism of his white constituents, legitimized the excuses that white people used to hide the sinister reasons for their antibusing stances, severely undercutting the efforts of his Black constituents to provide a better education for their children.
Housing segregation persists as policies have moved from racial to class-based foundations (Oluo)
- Today, decades after racist covenants were banned, many white neighborhoods maintain their segregation in less explicit ways, but with the same overall effect. Vigorous fights against affordable housing in wealthier, and even middle-class, neighborhoods have kept people with lower incomes out of white neighborhoods. While the discussion has shifted away from race and toward class, the impetus behind the fight against affordable housing often gives the racist intent away. When ProPublica spoke with residents in wealthy white towns in Connecticut about why they were fighting the construction of mixed-income housing developments in their neighborhoods, the dog whistles abounded.
The government enacted effective restrictions on female employment in response to the Great Depression (Oluo)
- In 1932, federal economic recovery efforts required that if both husband and wife held a government job, one would have to leave or be fired. We can guess which spouse in this equation was usually out of a job. Before the Great Depression, only nine states had laws on the books restricting the employment of married women. By 1940, twenty-six states did. 10 The argument against married women working was both economic and moral. One 1935 Wisconsin resolution against the employment of married women stated, “The large number of husbands and wives working for the state raises a serious moral question, as this committee feels that the practice of birth control is encouraged, and the selfishness that arises from the income of employment of husband and wife bids fair to break down civilization and a healthy atmosphere.” 11 In the 1930s, 77 percent of school districts in the nation had a policy against hiring married women as teachers, and 50 percent had a policy of firing women teachers once they got married. 12
Cumulative voting could better represent the complete electorate than a simple majority system (Oluo)
- In winner-take-all elections, an elected official can represent 51 percent of their electorate and not represent 49 percent of their electorate, and it would still be considered a representative democracy.
- As a possible solution, Guinier proposed a system of “cumulative voting.” It is not a new system and is practiced successfully in countries all over the world, as well as in multiple cities and counties across the United States. Cumulative voting is a way to increase minority representation by pooling multiple votes across a larger group of candidates and allocating seats based on the pooled votes.
- Concerned with how the large Republican candidate field was spreading moderate support among multiple candidates while concentrating far-right support for Trump, people started bringing up Guinier’s ideas for a voting process that would prevent such a scenario from making someone like Trump the Republican nominee. 51
People less likely to remember the faces and words of black women (Oluo)
- A study at Columbia University showed that people are less likely to remember the faces and words of Black women than they are to remember Black men or white women. That goes a long way toward explaining our amnesia surrounding Shirley Chisholm’s political legacy, which was quickly forgotten in much of mainstream media. When Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984, he was often touted as the first African American to run a serious campaign for president. For years, no biography of Chisholm was available in print from a mainstream publisher.
Post WWII government propaganda painted an idealistic picture of a white, male workforce (Oluo)
- While the pamphlet was initially framed as an impartial document in support of the war effort, the American History Association now acknowledges that it and other organizations like it were a part of the war machine intended to shape public opinion instead of merely gauging or reflecting it. The AHA admits that it “tailored its pamphlets to paint an idealized image of a postwar world that was essentially free of minorities, where women happily moved out of the factories and back into the kitchen, and where America would largely dominate the world stage.” 28
Problematic whiteness and masculinity have zero sum definitions (Oluo)
- — Mediocre, pg 47
- — Mediocre, pg 47
Redskin’s owner George Preston Marshall almost single-mindedly capitalized on and perpetuated racism (Oluo)
- From 1934 to 1946, there were no Black players in the NFL. There had been a few Black players before 1934, but for a dozen years there was not a single one. No official answer exists as to why, but we do know that no Black players whose contracts were up in 1933 were renewed for 1934, and no Black players were allowed to try out for NFL teams. When scholars have dug into the reason behind this unofficial ban, they often come across one name: George Preston Marshall. Marshall was the owner of the Boston Braves, which he later renamed the Boston Redskins, which eventually moved to D.C. and became the Washington Redskins. If you couldn’t tell by the fact that this was the man behind the still highly controversial and offensive Redskins team name, let me say without any reservation that George Preston Marshall was a fantastic racist.
- “George Preston Marshall—he was a businessman,” explained Dave Zirin. “He moved the Redskins here [to Washington, D.C.] from Boston because he wanted to appeal to the Jim Crow South.” As a committed racist and savvy businessman, Marshall saw a great marketing opportunity in racist football fans—especially across the South. The team fight song was sung to the tune of “Dixie” and in fact included the line “Fight for Old Dixie” until the 1960s. This Southern pageantry helped increase the Redskins’ popularity in the Southern areas where Marshall targeted many of the team’s radio broadcasts. 12
- Eventually, all the NFL teams were integrated—except the Washington Redskins. Marshall, who loved racism even more than winning games, was the last owner to integrate his football team. Marshall held on to his “no-Blacks” policy so long that the coach and his team became a joke to sports commentators like Shirley Povich and Sam Lacy, who mocked Marshall’s steadfast commitment to racism at the expense of his own record.
- During the Cold War, the country’s claim of being the defender of global freedom was severely undermined by the very public civil rights battles waging in the United States. Among many other transgressions happening in the country, Marshall’s stubborn commitment to racial segregation in a uniquely American sport served to highlight the nation’s hypocrisy in its ideological battle with the Soviets. As Dave Zirin said to me, “It was embarrassing on a global propaganda scale.” Finally, after the federal government threatened to take away his stadium if he didn’t integrate, Marshall recruited the first Black player for the Washington Redskins, who took the field in 1962. Perhaps the strain of seeing a Black man wearing his beloved Redskins uniform was too much for Marshall to handle, for he suffered a major, debilitating stroke in 1963.
Theodore Roosevelt advocated for killing Native Americans (Oluo)
- One man who was heavily influenced by cowboy mythology, and in turn shaped an entire generation in its image, was President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a poster boy for the manly renewal that Western-themed violence promised. Once known as a scrawny, squeaky-voiced dandy, Roosevelt moved to the Dakota badlands in the late 1880s to remake himself. When Roosevelt returned to the East Coast, tanned, muscular, and brimming with tales of taming wildlife and battles against cattle thieves, he became the American man that every American man wanted to be. Roosevelt was not just a strong proponent of cowboy mythology and Muscular Christianity; he was also directly inspired by William Cody’s image. When Roosevelt fought in the Spanish-American War in 1898, the name given to his regiment, the Rough Riders, was taken from Cody’s Wild West show. In return, Cody dramatized the Rough Riders’ celebrated Battle of San Juan Hill in his stage show. 14 Roosevelt also seemed to believe the same violent, racist stereotypes of Native people that were displayed in the early Wild West shows, infamously saying in 1886, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.” 15
Women and POC were largely left out of Great Depression aid programs (Oluo)
- Women and people of color were excluded from the bulk of job-creation efforts during the New Deal. Black sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers were by and large omitted from federal relief efforts, jobs programs, and minimum-wage enforcement. Many youth and young-adult job programs refused to admit Blacks. 18 Many employment opportunities, such as those with the Civilian Conservation Corps, were open only to men, cutting young women out of steady work with federal agencies like the National Park Service. 19 Other programs, like the Works Progress Administration (WPA), hired millions of Americans across the country for various public-works infrastructure projects. Black and brown Americans found that prime placement in those jobs went to whites, and many of the jobs were deemed unsuitable for women. There was also a limit of one WPA job per household, effectively eliminating women if a man in the family needed work. 20
Zoning and covenants were used to segregate and restrict POC real estate opportunities (Oluo)
- When outright bans of minority groups in white neighborhoods through the use of zoning was deemed unconstitutional in 1917, white communities and developers banded together to form housing covenants, which they wrote into their deeds and community charters. These covenants typically banned property owners from selling or renting property to anybody who was nonwhite. Across the Northern and Western United States, people of color seeking a better life for themselves and their families were pushed into smaller, less desirable, and more crowded areas. The use of covenants was so widespread that by 1940, 80 percent of the property in Los Angeles and Chicago banned Blacks. 27
Activist investors more likely to target women-lead companies (Oluo)
- To have two separate activist investors targeting you at once might seem extreme—unless you are a woman running a company. A study by the University of Missouri found that, even though women make up only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs, activist investors are more likely to target companies helmed by women with the intent of directing their management decisions, even when controlling for company performance. This means that activist investors are seeking out companies that are led by women with the goal of taking that leadership from them—because they are women. 45
18th Century governments paid for the scalp of native Americans — regardless of identity (Oluo)
- In Canada, the American colonies, and Mexico, governments paid a handsome sum for the scalps of Native men, women, and children. 3 In eighteenth-century New Hampshire, you could earn one hundred pounds for every male Native scalp you turned in, fifty pounds for each scalp of a Native woman, and twenty-five pounds for the scalp of each Native child. 4 These were not individually named Native people who were wanted for particular crimes—the reward was for any Native scalp, for no other reason than the act left the world with one less Native person.
2400 black people murdered in the South between 1882 and 1930 (Oluo)
- Over twenty-four hundred Blacks were murdered by Southern whites between 1882 and 1930.4
AOC’s congressional competitor never took her seriously, skipping debates, etc. (Oluo)
- Crowley’s seeming inability to consider Ocasio-Cortez as a serious competitor didn’t seem to faze her. When he was a no-show to their first scheduled debate, she gamely debated an empty chair. When he skipped yet another debate, sending a representative in his place, even the New York Times began to wonder if he had stopped taking his role as a US congressional representative seriously. 30
After WWII most working women wanted to keep their jobs, the rest of society wanted to fire them (Oluo)
- The efforts of the US government may have helped cement public opinion overall against women working after the war; studies showed that when asked what to do with women workers postwar, 48 percent of respondents said “fire them” and an additional 36 percent said “fire them, unless they have dependents, or are war widows, or there are plenty of jobs.” The government was far less successful in getting the women who were doing the work to eagerly give it up. 30 Studies and polls conducted in 1944 of working women showed that 75–80 percent of them wanted to keep their jobs after the war ended. 31
As higher education became both more accessible and expensive, the ROI for white men shrank, Ronald Reagan slashed public funding, disproportionately harming minorities (Oluo)
- Even though a college education was lifting white men, people of color, and women out of poverty at a reliable rate, the attitude toward higher education began to shift. As white men saw that their degrees no longer put them as far ahead of women and people of color as the degrees once did, they began to question whether a diploma was worth the cost. To add insult to injury for white men, suddenly women and people of color were demanding that college courses represent their interests as well. Students began agitating for social and political change on campus. Even white students were coming home filled with new ideas about peace and equality, which caused white parents across the country to think that a degree might not be as good for their children as they had once thought. 22 The growing doubts about the value of a college education were not entirely based on resentment over the rising status of women and people of color. Starting in the 1980s, costs for education rose rapidly. Although a college education in the 1980s and ’90s was more valuable than ever, as employers increasingly insisted on college degrees, the sticker shock of the upfront cost—especially compared to what earlier generations had paid—left many feeling as though college was once again a rich man’s game. But even with the increasing outcry over tuition prices and the seemingly lackluster returns on that investment (cries that came most notably from conservative circles), college enrollment levels kept rising—especially for women and people of color. 23 Riding the wave of economic and educational dissatisfaction in white America, President Ronald Reagan’s administration began to argue that perhaps the government funding of higher education was little more than a drain on revenue to support jobless young people on the taxpayer’s dime. They were, the Reagan administration said, “tax eaters.” 24 Like Reagan’s infamous invoking of the “welfare queen,” his rhetoric on higher-education assistance fell in line with his stories about how supposedly undeserving groups were taking advantage of the hardworking American. Reagan’s disdain for higher education—especially government funding for higher education—was both political and personal in nature. In his run for governor of California in 1966, Reagan successfully campaigned in part on a pledge to “clean up” UC Berkeley. Outraged at 1960s protests against the Vietnam War, Reagan painted a picture of spoiled hippie kids learning to be ungrateful while living on taxpayer money. Once elected governor, Reagan had UC president Clark Kerr fired, violently cracked down on student protests (in 1969, the police response to one such protest—at the People’s Park in Berkeley—left one student dead and dozens of students wounded), and immediately began undermining the UC system’s programs to keep college financially attainable to any student who wished to attend. 25 Having practiced on the University of California system, Reagan, once he became president of the United States, took his educational reforms national. He passed sweeping tax and spending cuts that slashed funding for students, making college more expensive and inaccessible to those who needed it the most. Due to the racial economic disparities in America, students of color were often more likely to need the financial assistance and educational programs that the US government had previously funded and were therefore some of the most greatly impacted by Reagan’s funding cuts. But at a time when middle-and working-class white America was dissatisfied with slower economic growth and increased competition at home (from women workers and workers of color) and abroad (from the rise in foreign manufacturing), Reagan was not punished politically for cutting the feet out from under underprivileged students. He was rewarded with reelection and the highest approval ratings since Franklin Roosevelt. 26
Bernie Sanders’ focus on class-based politics allows him to center white, male positions above POC and female priorities (Oluo)
- This claim that the focus on identity distracts from “real” politics—while simultaneously centering how “identity politics” affect white men and claiming not to be engaging in identity politics—is a tightrope of hypocrisy that Sanders himself likes to walk. Let’s be clear: centering the needs of progressive, working-class, white men is identity politics. It is just as steeped in individual identity as movements focusing on women and people of color. But it comes with a level of privilege built in that allows it to escape wider scrutiny. Here is an excerpt from an interview that Sanders gave GQ magazine in 2019: There are people who are very big into diversity but whose views end up being not particularly sympathetic to working people, whether they’re white or black or Latino.… My main belief is that we need to bring together a coalition of people—of black and white and Latino and Asian-American and Native-American—around a progressive agenda which is prepared to take on an extraordinarily powerful ruling class in this country. That is my view. Many of my opponents do not hold that view, and they think that all that we need is people who are candidates who are black or white, who are black or Latino or woman or gay, regardless of what they stand for, that the end result is diversity. 52 When Sanders has engaged on race, he’s quickly scurried away from it, in a way that isolates race issues from the issues of “ordinary” white Americans. When he 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 mean so much to ordinary Americans.” 53 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 line that Sanders insisted on walking had a special appeal to “progressive” white men who held more left-leaning and socialist views but were deeply afraid of being decentered politically by women and people of color. In Sanders, they had a candidate they could support who would allow them to appear “good”—he spoke of equality, of economic justice, of ending wars, of universal health care—while not having to engage with or challenge their own place in exploitative systems of racial and gender inequality.
Buffalo Bill is praised for a hypocritical change of heart for his role in decimating buffalo population and creating white supremacist narratives of the west (Oluo)
- As Cody interacted with the Native people who worked in his show, he became less comfortable with the scalping act that had launched his career. The scalp and warbonnet of Yellow Hair were removed from their stage-side case, never to be displayed again. Cody would eventually speak against the scalping of Native people. In his dramas of the Wild West, Native people were no longer portrayed as bloodthirsty savages and instead became “noble savages”: moral, trustworthy innocents who were tricked by evil Mormons into attacking innocent white people—at least until Cody and his friends could show up and save the day. 21 Cody would also come to regret the massacre of buffalo that had given him his stage name. While the great buffalo hunt featuring live bison would always be a prominent part of Cody’s show, he began to speak out against the buffalo hunting that he had popularized. Perhaps one of the most brutal of white male privileges is the opportunity to live long enough to regret the carnage you have brought upon others.
- Many of those few remaining buffalo were found in Cody’s Wild West show, where he staged his great buffalo hunts, proclaiming them the “last of the only known Native herd.” Crowds came from all over to gaze at the remaining few of the great beasts. Cody would later be praised for helping lead buffalo-conservation efforts by keeping American interest in the animals alive through his shows. 23 The man who earned his name by killing buffalo is now honored for his commitment to their survival.
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show created a false, white supremacist narrative of the west (Oluo)
- With the Wild West show gaining in popularity, Cody also strove to increase its respectability. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was not a “show”—it was, according to Cody, an educational event. It was a living history. People would come to Wild West to learn as much as to be entertained. Few questioned the supposed educational value or legitimacy of his project. And the racist, exaggerated stories of white male American bravery, leadership, and righteous victory became a part of our collective understanding of American history; these misleading legends persist to this day.
Bundy children anecdotes that reveal white male supremacist attitude and welfare hypocrisy (Oluo)
- Cliven’s son Ryan’s first political protest was in the third grade. The target of his protest was his own mother. Cliven had lost money on some cattle, and the family was having trouble making ends meet. To ease their burden, Cliven’s wife, Jane, signed up their five children for subsidized school lunch. Ryan, who had been taught by his father to never accept government handouts, refused to eat. In remembering the protest, Ryan stated that it reinforced the lesson that “we’re supposed to earn what we have and not to take from others.” 28 Each day he sat quietly outside and refused to join his classmates at lunch. After three days, Ryan’s mother relented and began making lunches from home again. Nothing says “American” like a boy making a woman struggle so that he can seem independent.
Bundy/Malheur dispute was over land stolen from Paiute people, disrespected artifacts and graves (Oluo)
- Lost in this battle between white men is the fact that neither the ranchers nor the federal government has the right to the land around Bunkerville or the Malheur refuge. For centuries, the land of the region was lived on and tended to by the Paiute nations. It may be clichéd to say that they lived in harmony with the land, but they certainly knew better than to try to graze cattle in the hot, dry desert. The Paiute people followed the buffalo and other wild food sources through this terrain. Their land-management practices ensured that food would be abundant and that the landscape was protected. (In fact, the current recommended practice of setting controlled light burns to prevent larger forest fires in high-risk areas was for many decades dismissed by white Americans as “Paiute forestry.”) 42 The land was promised to the Paiute people by the federal government in 1872. But the government had no interest in keeping white colonizers from settling there. The Paiute people took their grievances to the US government, and they were rebuffed. White settlers were incredulous that the Paiutes thought they had any right to the land. An editorial in the Idaho Statesman summed up the popular opinion toward Native claims on land: “The idea that the Indians have any right to the soil is ridiculous.… They have no more right to the soil of the Territories of the United States than wolves or coyotes.” 43
- When the Bundys took over the Malheur refuge in 2016 and damaged many priceless Paiute artifacts housed there, nobody besides the Paiute people remaining in the area seemed to care, just as few non-Native people seem to care about the damage currently being done to the land the Paiute have called home for hundreds of years. “I could go to the Bundys where his grandparents are buried,” said Jarvis Kennedy, the Paiute tribal council’s sergeant at arms, when he was asked how the Paiute people felt about seeing video of Bundy’s clan rifling through their sacred artifacts. “How would they feel if I drove over their grave and went through their heirlooms?” 45
Business leadership roles are generally not open to women (Oluo)
- In 2019, women made up just 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Five percent. And yet women make up a little more than half the overall population. We find more dudes named John at the heads of top companies than women. 38
Contrary to their message, conservative and racist leaders value higher education and have benefited from its knowledge and structure (Oluo)
- The truth is, those behind the attacks on higher education came from higher education. The vast majority of the politicians and pundits who appear on your television screens trying to convince you that a college education will brainwash your children into hating America have a very good college education themselves. They wouldn’t for a minute dream of allowing their kids to skip college. It is on those campuses where they first learned how our political systems and our political identities work. And it’s on campuses where they learn that those systems and identities can be used to consolidate political power for those who are willing to play on the base racist and sexist fears of white men and of those who benefit from their proximity to white men.
Creator of the SAT (Carl Brigham) was a profound racist, concerned with preserving American intelligence (Oluo)
- In 1923 Brigham published his landmark book, A Study of American Intelligence, in which he warned white society of the dangers of rising racial and ethnic diversity. Brigham’s book was used to justify everything from anti-immigration legislation to forced sterilization of people deemed “unfit” to procreate: “The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence here of the negro. These are the plain, if somewhat ugly, facts that our study shows. The deterioration of American intelligence is not inevitable, however, if public action can be aroused to prevent it.” 12 The book was highly influential in American society and academia, and shortly after, Brigham was asked by the College Board to help develop a new test to screen college applicants for academic ability: the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT. 13 But by 1930, Brigham had rejected his own eugenics-based tests. He’d found some fundamental flaws in his methodology. In particular, he had come to realize that what his tests showed, instead of intelligence, was the test-taker’s ability to speak English, attend good primary schools, and demonstrate a strong familiarity with white culture. He wrote a refutation of his earlier army research in a paper titled “Intelligence Tests of Immigrant Groups” and later denounced the SAT tests that he had based on that research, but by then it was too late. 14 The SAT persists as the primary test of student readiness used by colleges and universities throughout the United States. 15 — Mediocre, pg 93
Destruction of the buffalo population was a genocidal tactic against native Americans (Oluo)
- In 1869, facing a protracted battle with Native tribes like the Sioux, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Phillip Sheridan as commanding general of the army and asked him to help solve the “Indian Problem” once and for all. Sheridan reached out to William Tecumseh Sherman, who had distinguished himself with his scorched-earth battle tactics during the Civil War, for advice. Sherman observed that wherever buffalo existed, there would be Native people, and they would continue to fight for land wherever the buffalo roamed. Sherman’s advice to Sheridan was simple: remove the buffalo in order to remove the Indian. “I think it would be wise to invite all the sportsmen of England and America there this fall for a Grand Buffalo hunt, and make one grand sweep of them all,” Sherman wrote to Sheridan. 7 No more buffalo, no more Indians.
Discriminatory housing policies have led to a wealth gap between white and black families (Oluo)
- During the postwar era, when the government actively worked to increase homeownership, loan programs like the FHA and the GI Bill were of much less use to Blacks. Banks wouldn’t work with them, and Blacks were banned by covenants from living in neighborhoods with the most affordable new homes. The intergenerational wealth lost to Black families who were kept from buying homes during the postwar housing boom was the foundation for the vast wealth gap between white and Black families today. 33
Donald Trump and conservative leaders demonize higher education to ensure a base of low-skilled support (Oluo)
- In demonizing higher education—the same education that Trump ensured all his children received—Trump can maintain popularity among white voters who feel left behind by calls for increasingly skilled labor and who feel threatened by the seemingly rising socioeconomic status of women and people of color. Further, by undermining higher education, he can ensure future voters for himself and the Republican party. At the root of all this we have a consolidation of power and knowledge by the elite, with the intention of keeping the working classes divided and disenfranchised. In Trump’s (and many other conservative politicians’) ideal world, the average American seeks only enough knowledge to fulfill his or her part of a capitalist system, while those born to privilege will learn the ways of world leadership at elite institutions.
Early 1900s Black people fled the south, leaving the cotton industry in shambles (Oluo)
- They fled in record numbers. Between 1916 and 1930, more than one million Blacks moved north in the hopes of finding jobs, education, and safety. By the time Southern leaders changed tactics and decided to improve working and living conditions for Blacks instead of antagonizing them, it was too late. The Southern cotton industry was in shambles. Because the Southern elites had tied all their financial hopes to that single industry and had driven away the workforce that could have helped the region transition into new industries, the South would never be the model of prosperity it had once considered itself. And by the end of the Great Migration, more than six million people had left the South, which would be forever changed.
Early Black football players faced fan-supported violent retribution from their teammates (Oluo)
- When All-American player Paul Robeson joined Columbia University’s team in 1918, the young Black player was quickly met with a brutal welcome. “On the first day of practice, I was attacked by twenty-one guys,” Robeson recounted. “All the guys on the defense, and all the guys on my team. They put me in the hospital for two weeks.” 6 Robeson’s experience, while exceptionally violent, was not all that unique. Black players were frequently attacked and singled out, not only by opposing teams but by their own teammates. Robeson was not the only Black player to end up in the hospital due to the racist aggression of white players, and when a Black player was injured on the field, it was sometimes accompanied by chants of “kill the nigger” or “kill the coon” from the stands. In 1923, Iowa State’s lone Black team member, Jack Trice, was killed after sustaining beatings during a game against the University of Minnesota that left him with hemorrhaged lungs and internal bleeding. 7
Employers and unions temporarily catered to women when they needed labor during WWII, then quickly reversed course when men returned (Oluo)
- Women who had never expected to work had to be recruited and kept happy while working. But they also had to leave their jobs as soon as men returned. To that end, working conditions for many women suddenly became much better than they had been before the war. Recognizing that women would still be expected to care for their families and homes while working, factory owners started adding daycare centers. Facilities were adjusted for women’s comfort, and training programs were created just for them. To protect women’s supposed sensibilities and purity, they were primarily hired at facilities that had few or no male coworkers (outside of supervisors and managers, who were still predominantly male). Fearful that the low wages typically paid to women would keep employers from firing them when the war ended, unions pressed for competitive wages for women. These gains were often denied, and most women still earned a good deal less than men—but their wages did increase once unions got involved. Women were living a workplace dream they had never seen before—and wouldn’t see again.
Football was originally an extremely violent sport, involving deaths and serious injuries (Oluo)
- American football had its beginnings in the Ivy League colleges, which were attended by young elites like Roosevelt. Its early days were so violent that dozens of student athletes died every year, nearly dooming the sport before it fully got off the ground. The Smithsonian detailed some of the injuries recorded during a particularly brutal college game in 1905: “Four concussions, three ‘kicks in the head,’ seven broken collarbones, three grave spinal injuries, five serious internal injuries, three broken arms, four dislocated shoulders, four broken noses, three broken shoulder blades, three broken jaws, two eyes ‘gouged out,’ one player bitten and another knocked unconscious three times in the same game, one breastbone fractured, one ruptured intestine and one player ‘dazed.’” 2
Higher education originally rewarded class, not meritocratic achievement (Oluo)
- Universities were seen more as finishing schools for wealthy white men on their path to inheriting leadership than places for practical education. In fact, early degrees were often awarded in graduation ceremonies that recognized the students not by order of achievement or even field of study but by family rank. 4
In the Great Depression, 1/3 of Mexican-Americans were coerced into leaving the country, 60% were US Citizens (Oluo)
- Between 1931 and 1934, over three hundred thousand Mexican Americans were coerced, threatened, or forced to leave the United States for Mexico—an estimated one-third of the national Mexican American population. Let’s pause to let that sink in: one-third of Mexican Americans were driven from the country against their will because white men, unable to fix the mess they had made of the economy, decided to take their frustration out on brown workers in a fit of xenophobia. Sixty percent of those repatriated were American-born. 16
It’s possible to perpetuate unequal race roles with fantasy football (Oluo)
- Yes, the majority of players now are Black, but those calling the shots—the owners, the managers, the quarterbacks—are primarily white men. White fans shifted their relationship to football as well. They identify with the quarterback if they identify with a player at all. “Why is it that fantasy football is so popular?” Zirin asked rhetorically. “It’s popular because, when it comes to football, fans identify with being an owner or a general manager, not with being a player. Why don’t they identify with being a player? Well, a couple of reasons. One: race, without question,” he explains. “And two: because being an NFL player is to be a very specific kind of athlete. You are six foot three, 280 pounds. You’re running forty yards in 4.5 seconds, and fans, white fans, view these NFL players as half god, half chattel.”
Joe Biden has hypocritical stances on busing (Oluo)
- Biden was obsessed with ending busing, stating that, in his first eight years in the Senate, “No issue has consumed more of my time and energies.” 23
- Suddenly, he remembered his actions around busing much differently. When he was interviewed for the popular podcast Pod Save America in March of 2019, Biden decided to burnish his busing record by focusing on the time he voted to support busing in 1974—and not the decade he spent trying to defeat it. “In the middle of the single most extensive busing order in all the United States history, in my state,” he said, “I voted against an amendment, cast the deciding vote, to allow courts to keep busing as a remedy. Because there are some things that are worth losing over.” 28
Lani Guinier Assistant AG nomination withdrawn based on false racial fear mongering (Oluo)
- “Guinier, who has been a voting rights litigator for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, seeks a society in which a minority can impose its will on the majority,” wrote Lally Weymouth at the Washington Post. 20
- There were, of course, a few flaws with the reasoning behind all the outrage over Guinier’s nomination. “No one cared that, in fact, I did not believe in quotas,” explained Guinier in her memoir. 22 If Guinier wasn’t actually advocating for racial quotas in voting, what was she advocating for? Guinier was concerned with the impact that the concepts “one man one vote” and “winner take all” voting were having on the political representation of people of color.
- In winner-take-all elections, an elected official can represent 51 percent of their electorate and not represent 49 percent of their electorate, and it would still be considered a representative democracy.
- As a possible solution, Guinier proposed a system of “cumulative voting.” It is not a new system and is practiced successfully in countries all over the world, as well as in multiple cities and counties across the United States. Cumulative voting is a way to increase minority representation by pooling multiple votes across a larger group of candidates and allocating seats based on the pooled votes.
- Republicans, Independents, and even some Democrats began to ask Clinton to withdraw Guinier’s nomination. Whereas President George H. W. Bush, who had nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, remained a stalwart supporter of Thomas against serious sexual harassment charges, in the face of the rising backlash Clinton didn’t seem very inclined to defend Guinier when she dared to try to address the suppression of minority voters. His first response to the controversy was a tepid dismissal. “The Senate ought to be able to put up with a little controversy for the cause of civil rights,” Clinton told reporters in May. 24 As the backlash continued and Guinier was further caricatured into the image of a white-hating Black supremacist, Clinton remained mostly silent. Clinton’s camp began to pressure Guinier to withdraw her name from consideration, but she refused. Guinier tried to meet with Clinton to discuss the nomination and the controversy, but he wouldn’t even extend to her the basic respect of a meeting. He did not speak with her personally until right before he announced that he was withdrawing her nomination.
- Concerned with how the large Republican candidate field was spreading moderate support among multiple candidates while concentrating far-right support for Trump, people started bringing up Guinier’s ideas for a voting process that would prevent such a scenario from making someone like Trump the Republican nominee. 51
Most white Americans have exclusively white friends (Oluo)
- Most white Americans have exclusively white friendship circles; three-quarters of white Americans have less than one friend of color. 1
NFL teams were not fully integrated until 1962 (Oluo)
- During the Cold War, the country’s claim of being the defender of global freedom was severely undermined by the very public civil rights battles waging in the United States. Among many other transgressions happening in the country, Marshall’s stubborn commitment to racial segregation in a uniquely American sport served to highlight the nation’s hypocrisy in its ideological battle with the Soviets. As Dave Zirin said to me, “It was embarrassing on a global propaganda scale.” Finally, after the federal government threatened to take away his stadium if he didn’t integrate, Marshall recruited the first Black player for the Washington Redskins, who took the field in 1962. Perhaps the strain of seeing a Black man wearing his beloved Redskins uniform was too much for Marshall to handle, for he suffered a major, debilitating stroke in 1963.
National Park and Forest land was stolen from Native Americans (Oluo)
- Roosevelt claimed for the United States tens of millions of acres previously promised to Native people, land that had been stewarded by Native people for countless generations. They became our national forests and parks. In an article published in the American Indian Law Journal, Native scholar and law professor Angelique Townsend EagleWoman noted that while Roosevelt is celebrated today as a great conservationist for his creation of national parks and forests, his actions were actually “an illegal, unconsented-to land grab from the Tribal Nations, and then a reappropriating of those lands owned by tribal peoples to the ownership of the United States on a might makes right basis.”
Northerners developed racist attitudes and responded with violence when confronted with an influx of economically competitive blacks (Oluo)
- But this honeymoon was short-lived. While many businesses and cities thrived economically with the influx of much-needed labor, local whites were unprepared for such rapid changes to their communities. Between 1910 and 1930, the Black population of Chicago grew by 600 percent. In that same time period, the Black population of Detroit grew by an astronomical 2,000 percent, from a population of 6,000 to 120,000.19 As soldiers began returning from World War I in greater number, many white men were coming home to find themselves in direct competition with Black laborers for the first time in their lives. Black migrants found themselves facing hostility that felt a lot like what they had faced in the South. Suddenly, they weren’t allowed to shop in white stores, they were rarely hired for jobs white men wanted, and employers who did hire them often faced the fury of white workers.
- White anger exploded in the summer of 1919, known as Red Summer. Across the country, anti-Black riots broke out in cities including East St. Louis, Chicago, Omaha, and Houston. Whites in approximately twenty-five cities enacted widespread violence on Black residents. 20
POC (women particularly) are taken for granted as a democratic voting bloc, by both sides (Oluo)
- While we like to give lip service to the diversity and open opportunity of our political process, the truth is that much of white America completely ignores the political lives of people of color—especially women of color. We are often seen as a reliably Democratic voting bloc, to be pulled out each election cycle to vote for a mediocre white Democratic candidate and then put back in storage until the next election. At least that’s how white Democrats see us. Many white Republicans also see us as a reliably Democratic voting bloc, to be prevented from exercising our right to vote at all costs. Sure, one is worse than the other, but both are pretty shitty.
Police disproportionately kill minorities, and almost never face any discipline (Oluo)
- Black and Indigenous people are approximately three to four times more likely to die in an encounter with police than white people—but in 2015 and 2016, 1,158 white Americans were killed by police officers. 1 Over half of all people killed by police are disabled. Even though many hundreds of people are killed by officers every year, between the years 2005 and 2018, only thirty-five officers were convicted of a crime connected to the deaths of civilians; only three of those convictions were for murder. 2
Republicans responded to the Green New Deal with fabricated criticisms (Oluo)
- Republicans, of course, treated Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal like it was actual terrorism on paper. None of the below quotes are made up. These are real words, from grown-ass adults who were elected to represent the American people. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said that the Green New Deal would force Americans to “ride around on high-speed light rail, supposedly powered by unicorn tears.” Trump claimed that it would take away everyone’s “airplane rights.” Wyoming senator John Barrasso issued perhaps the most bizarre of all the dire warnings about the Green New Deal, telling Americans to stock up on beef and ice cream, because under the Green New Deal, “livestock will be banned.” 43
Resentment of women workers was more of a white issue, as black families often depended on multiple jobs holders (Oluo)
- Resentment toward working women during the Great Depression was a uniquely white problem. In many Black households, women had always worked to supplement the discriminatorily low wages paid to Black men and to help balance the effects of widespread hiring discrimination that kept Black workers out of many fields of employment. Black women were not expected to stop working due to any misguided efforts to preserve jobs for Black men.
Shirley Chisholm was the first serious African American presidential candidate, yet almost immediately forgotten (Oluo)
- A study at Columbia University showed that people are less likely to remember the faces and words of Black women than they are to remember Black men or white women. That goes a long way toward explaining our amnesia surrounding Shirley Chisholm’s political legacy, which was quickly forgotten in much of mainstream media. When Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984, he was often touted as the first African American to run a serious campaign for president. For years, no biography of Chisholm was available in print from a mainstream publisher.
Society was built through exploitation of minorities (Oluo)
- There are all sorts of systems and institutional barriers that have worked for centuries to ensure that large segments of our society—regardless of talent, skill, or character—will never be allowed to rise out of poverty or powerlessness. This country’s wealth was built on exploitation and violence, and those who worked hardest to build it were not empowered or enriched by its successes—they were enslaved people, migrant laborers, and domestic workers. Much of this country’s early infrastructure, for example, was built with slave labor, and then with grotesquely underpaid immigrant labor and prison labor.
Southern college football teams boycotted games against northern schools so they didn’t have to play against black players, until the 1970s (Oluo)
- Michigan won the game against Georgia Tech that day, but the real winner in the compromise was segregation: Georgia Tech and other Southern teams were so appalled that they had to go to so much trouble to avoid playing against Black athletes that they informally boycotted Northern teams until the 1970s. 9
The GI Bill boosted white, male fortunes and offered almost nothing to women and POC (Oluo)
- The GI Bill provided education, training, financial relief, home loans, small business loans, and more. Between those benefits and the new skills and businesses that had been opened up by wartime production, and with the financial support of the US government, many men found themselves on the path to financial security—even prosperity. Enrollment in college, which prior to the war had been a place still mostly reserved for wealthy and socially connected sons, skyrocketed, as did home ownership. Almost half of all veterans started their own businesses. 33 Women were almost completely cut out of GI benefits. Of the eight million WWII veterans who used the GI Bill, only about sixty-five thousand were women. 34 That’s 0.8 percent. Meanwhile, the average Black veteran found that the GI Bill simply returned him to his lower economic caste. College aid was offered to Black veterans, but it was moot; the vast majority of US colleges and universities refused to accept Black students, and those that did accepted so small a number that most Black veterans were unable to use the tuition benefits. Homeowner’s assistance was of even less use to Black vets, since banks refused to work with Black buyers, and cities redlined Black families into neighborhoods designed to keep the return on their investments as low as possible. The GI Bill was legislation designed to benefit only white men.
The SAT measures opportunity, more than college readiness, thereby entrenching white, male dominance (Oluo)
- It should come as no surprise, then, given the SAT’s racist origins, that since its inception, poor students, Black students, Hispanic students, and Indigenous students have consistently received scores on the test that are double-digit percentages lower than white students. And that SAT scores have long been recognized as poor indicators of actual college readiness. Given what we know about society’s biases and how the scales are always tilted toward people in power, it was inevitable that a test that so clearly showed favor to wealthier white students would be eagerly adopted by schools seeking ways to keep their percentages of wealthy white students high, and their percentages of poor students and students of color low. In disadvantaging poor students and students of color, and in advantaging white students more for their race than for their actual college aptitude or readiness, the SAT test has always worked as designed.
The ethos of the Wild West is really just white men battling each other for resources that weren’t theirs to take (Oluo)
- In the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre lies the tale of the battle for the West. White men battling other white men for land that was never theirs, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake. Note: Yes the Buffalo Bill story of heroic masculinity seems very fabricated, but the massacre story does seem to say that life on the frontier was very different than today. When you had to depend on yourself exclusively — there was no society around to protect the massacred settlers. The day to day fact of their lives were that they were very much on their own and responsible for protecting themselves. Which in some ways is “masculine”, although on the other hand probably most of the dangers they would have had to think about were more mundane things like snake bite or breaking a bone or running out of water. Stuff backpackers today would worry about in isolated areas. No SPOT beacons back then.
Twice as many poor whites as blacks left the South in the early 1900s (Oluo)
- While much has been written about the Great Migration of Black Southerners to the North and West, it is important to note that it was not only Blacks who fled. Poor white Southerners had little reason to stay in an economically devastated South and every reason to leave for the same opportunities in Northern factories that Blacks were leaving for. The Great Migration changed the landscape of the United States in immediately visible ways as Black communities became established across the country for the first time in history, but the migration of Southern whites shaped the American landscape in ways that we are perhaps only beginning to understand. In the end, twice as many Southern whites left as Blacks.
WWII veteran benefit policies forced POC to accept hazardous and low paying work (Oluo)
- Even unemployment assistance worked against Black veterans. When they returned home to find that among the new, promising jobs, the only positions offered to them were the most dangerous, the lowest skilled, and the lowest paid, they were forced to accept them. If they turned down these hazardous and poorly compensated jobs, they were reported to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and their benefits were cut, leaving them with nothing. 35
White Southern migrants brought bitterness and racism with them to the North and West (Oluo)
- As poor whites left the South, they took their anger and bitterness with them. Defeated, embarrassed, and forced to leave their homes, poor Southern whites were further victimized by the cool welcome they often received from established Northern and Western whites. Many early reports of white migration show that Southern whites had difficulty adjusting to city life, their kids had trouble in more rigorous schools, and they felt mistreated by their new bosses. To add insult to injury, they often had to compete against Blacks for jobs and sometimes even had to work alongside them.
White male supremacy is bad for everyone (Oluo)
- The rewarding of white male mediocrity not only limits the drive and imagination of white men; it also requires forced limitations on the success of women and people of color in order to deliver on the promised white male supremacy. White male mediocrity harms us all.
White men involved in social justice can (sub)consciously center themselves (Oluo)
- So what happens when a white man decides to take up a cause that will directly threaten his identity as a white man? Well, sometimes he will subconsciously work to maintain his position above those he is trying to “help” by elevating himself even further above them with his selfless deeds, by recentering the goals of the group to maintain his social and political power, or by quietly exploiting or abusing individuals he is claiming to help—or perhaps a combination of the three. Sometimes this is the conscious goal of the white man in joining these efforts from the very beginning. Such men are predators. But often these men are completely unaware of their hypocrisy because they are not doing anything out of the ordinary by centering themselves when they’ve always been centered, or by taking advantage of those who have always been taken advantage of—they’re just living according to the norms of society. But ultimately, if a white man’s abuses are discovered and he’s no longer able to freely center himself or to elevate himself above those he feels entitled to oppress, he will often completely reject his previous declarations of allyship. When challenged, he will go back to the open misogyny and racism that will always put him first.
- Mediocre, highly forgettable white men regularly enter feminist spaces and expect to be centered and rewarded, and they have been. They get to be highly flawed, they get to regularly betray the values of their movement, yet they will be praised for their intentions or even simply for their presence—while women must be above reproach in their personal and public lives in order to avoid seeing themselves and their entire movement engulfed in scandal. Even in today’s feminist movements, there is a push to show men what they will get out of supporting feminism. You should be a feminist, we argue, because it will also benefit you.
White men paradoxically retain privileged status in the political strategy of progressives (Oluo)
- In the lead-up to the 2020 election, as with the 2016 election, we were drowning in talk of how we were going to make working-and middle-class white men feel included in order to defeat conservative forces. But I must honestly ask: What exactly do people who aren’t white men have that could be more inclusive of white men? We do not have control of our local governments, our national governments, our school boards, our universities, our police forces, our militaries, our workplaces. All we have is our struggle. And yet we are told that our struggle for inclusion and equity—and our celebration of even symbolic steps toward them—is divisive and threatening to those who have far greater access to everything else than we can dream of. If white men are finding that the overwhelmingly white-male-controlled system isn’t meeting their needs, how did we end up being the problem? In an increasingly diverse country, white men can only demand to be the exclusive focus of our political systems for so long.
White politicians continue to capitalized on racist blocs for personal gain (Oluo)
- When society is constantly telling you that you are not supposed to be facing any of these problems, because you are a white man, your anger will convince you that somebody has stolen what should be yours. The danger with this type of anger becomes most apparent when a savvy populist decides to name that target for you. In the 1960s, the opportunist who exploited white male fear and anger was George Wallace.
- In response to Wallace’s appeal to white, working-class voters, the Nixon campaign decided to outnigger Wallace with a so-called Southern Strategy. Shifting the focus of the campaign to one of law and order, protecting state’s rights, and promises of returning America to the average workingman, the campaign employed clearly recognized codes (which are still used to this day) for “we will restore your position of superiority over Black people.” Nixon’s move toward a white supremacist campaign, coupled with the power of the Republican Party, was enough to defeat both Wallace and Humphrey and win him the presidential election. A strong message was sent from Nixon’s victory: if you want to mobilize the white American working class, you must at least allude to reinforcing its economic and political power over communities of color. Several future presidents—from Reagan to Clinton to Trump—took the lesson to heart.
White, male success has been the measuring stick by which society was constructed (Oluo)
- Our culture has shaped the expectation of greatness exclusively around white men by erasing the achievements of women and people of color from our histories, by excluding women and people of color as heroes in our films and books, by ensuring that the qualified applicant pool is restricted to white male social networks.
- Looking through these stories, I saw parts of myself as well—not only where I had suffered at the hands of those in power, but also in my attempts to fulfill the role assigned to me in the hopes of gaining my own personal power. We’ve all been instructed to value and strive toward the white male version of success. I saw how strong the messaging has been, and how susceptible we all are to it. When we consider the privilege hierarchies of race, gender, and class, it’s clear that some of us have played a larger role than others in perpetuating this harmful image of white maleness. But I also think that all of us, regardless of demographic, have played a part in upholding white male supremacy. We are all told to aspire to the largest bite of our piece of the pie—no matter how meager our piece may be.
Women still face unequal and discriminatory working conditions (Oluo)
- women in general haven’t enjoyed the extraordinary gains in the workplace that those who were fighting for the right to work in the 1940s hoped for. Women are still paid significantly less than white men; Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic women barely earn half of what white men make. Surveys show that between 30 and 80 percent of women report having been sexually harassed in the workplace. Most women still work at companies that don’t provide daycare assistance or adequate family leave to care for sick children. This country’s average maternity-leave programs are an embarrassment when compared to those of most European countries. In Washington, my home state, new parents are guaranteed only twelve weeks of paid leave following the birth or adoption of a child. 36 In Sweden, new parents are given sixteen months of paid leave. 37
Writing about racial inequality has resulted in significant online and in person harassment for Ijeoma (Oluo)
- The personal insults and slurs started fairly quickly. In the comments sections of my articles I’d be called a “dumb bitch” or an “ugly nigger.” People soon started dropping my personal information into comments as well—information about my children or past jobs. The death threats came pretty quickly too, if not as frequently. To my knowledge, 2017 was the first time I was doxed. Doxing is when someone posts your home address, email, phone numbers, financial information—pretty much anything they can find on you—online for people to do with what they wish. In 2019, my home was swatted. Swatting is when somebody calls the police from a phone number in your neighborhood and states that there is some violence or threat of violence happening in your home in order to have an armed SWAT team sent to your house. In 2017, a swatting led to the death of a Kansas man, who made the mistake of lowering his arms when a SWAT team showed up at his home out of the blue. In my case, a caller pretending to be my son phoned the police and said that he had shot his parents to death. Six officers holding rifles pulled my son out of our home at six a.m. and searched our house. If I hadn’t become aware before the swatting that my personal information had been placed online, the situation could have been much worse. But I had received notice that my address (and my mom’s address, and my sister’s and brother’s addresses) had been placed on a website that specifically encourages swatting. I had called my local police department and let them know that they might be called to my house on a swatting attempt. So even though they still sent an armed response to my house, they did so knowing it was unlikely that they were going to find two dead bodies inside. It meant that when my sleepy teenage son opened the door and saw police and then quickly shut the door so he could put his shoes on, they didn’t open fire. I cannot tell you how often I’ve played out worse, alternate scenarios in my head since that happened.
- A few days after the police showed up at my door, my mom started receiving harassment at home. A few more days later, somebody tweeted out my social security number. In my career as a writer, I have been able to speak more openly on social and political issues than any other Black woman I know. I do not have to worry about being fired from my job; speaking out is literally my job. I do not have to worry about losing friends—I lost all the ones who were going to leave a few hundred articles ago. But my children and I have had to spend quite a few nights away from our home for our safety. I have had my email hacked, my financial information compromised. My sons’ schools have reached out to make sure there are safety plans in place for them there. I’ve received so many death threats via email that they have their own folder (which I’ve titled “fan mail”). Armed police have been sent to my house looking for my dead body.
Books
- Mediocre
Glass cliff: Female business leaders are often selected when the situation is desperate and then don’t receive cooperation and support (Oluo)
- So when Jill Abramson was promoted to executive editor of the New York Times, it was, sadly, a big deal. Many, myself included, took Abramson’s promotion as a sign of positive change in the publishing world. And when she was publicly and abruptly fired just two years later, many of us realized that maybe she—and the rest of us—had been set up. When you can’t keep women out anymore, and you can’t force them all to become secretaries or teachers because modern social politics demand that you at least pretend to support gender equality in the workplace, what can you do to keep women out of powerful positions in business? You can set them up to fail—or, to be more accurate, you set them up to fall. It’s called the glass cliff, and it’s a phrase that was first coined in 2005 by University of Exeter researchers Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam.
- After all that struggle, women have to jump at fraught and risk-filled leadership positions at failing companies because they know those are likely the only chances they’ll get. Once at the top, they have to battle a team of white male managers who suddenly don’t feel like working as hard as they used to. They have to find a way to be a “strong leader” while also not seeming like a “bitch.” They have to battle to push forward every change they were brought in to make, no matter how incremental. And through it all the news articles documenting their efforts will focus on their appearance, their voice, their age. When we look at the treatment of women in business and in business leadership, how Abramson, Pao, and Mayer fared in their jobs will probably not come as a surprise.
- When Pao resigned she was replaced by Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman. He didn’t roll back the changes that Pao had implemented—the ones that apparently had caused so much outrage with Redditors—and yet, for some mysterious reason, the outrage ended. The protests stopped; the popular subreddits were taken out of their private settings. There wasn’t an influx of new subreddits titled “r/ SteveHuffmanIsACunt.” Soon Facebook and Twitter would also take steps to remove abusive accounts from their platforms, and yet the widespread uprising against their male CEOs that Pao had faced never materialized. And even though the ambitious user goals Reddit had set were apparently so important that failure to meet them would have forced Pao to resign, it took Reddit over three years after she left to reach the half-billion monthly-user goal they set for her in 2015.