“What did they see? They saw a white man in a puffy jacket and huge mittens, distant not only in his social distancing, but in his demeanor and attire,” Seyer-Ochi wrote, adding, “What did I see? What did I think my students should see? A wealthy, incredibly well-educated and -privileged white man, showing up for perhaps the most important ritual of the decade, in a puffy jacket and huge mittens.
I disagree. Bernie Sanders is old. Old people tend to wear what they feel like wearing. Also, he has spent half a century fighting for the rights of the Common Man, the wage-slaves, People of Colour, Everyman. He dressed warmly because it’s cold. Should he have dressed in the attire of some other ethnic group or another? No. That would be Cultural Appropriation. He dressed in the attire of his demographic. Just because his demographic is White and male does not indicate White Privilege.
“I don’t know many poor, or working class, or female, or struggling-to-be-taken-seriously folk who would show up at the inauguration of our 46th president dressed like Bernie.”
Fine. One is expected to dress for the occasion. But what if he wore a suit, overcoat, and a warm hat? Isn’t that the costume of privileged White men? If he was so attired, wouldn’t there be people saying he’s showing his White Privilege by dressing in the clothing of the wealthy elite?
Yes, there is White Privilege; but it seems petty and a waste of time to focus one’s outrage on a person who has spent his life fighting for the rights of those of us who are not among the ‘wealthy elites’.
Privilege can be used for good or evil. Using your privilege to cut in line is bad. Using your privilege to help the less privileged be heard or respected is good. Using your privilege to wear cloths that will keep you reasonably comfortable at a long outdoors event seems neither good nor bad, just neutral. It’s an example of why everyone should have all the privileges.
Seyer-Ochi is a fucking idiot. According to that article, she is getting roasted on Twitter as she deserves. She’s not the only one. I saw a tweet from someone who claimed that Bernie was being a misogynist and devaluing the emotional labor of women by sitting like that. Don’t ask me to explain, I can’t.
There’s always going to be a handful of woker than thou idiots out there. They’re annoying, but I’m much more worried about the Q cult.
When I ran across the article earlier, that’s what I was thinking. His privilege of being allowed to attend the inauguration dressed like that is that he’s a respected politician and he was invited. If Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama attended dressed like that, I think we can be fairly certain they wouldn’t be turned away either.
This teacher seems to be missing the fact that this event wasn’t open to the general public.
Also, I have a hard time wrapping my head around this exchange actually happening, or, if it did, it’s because she guided them towards it:
“Seyer-Ochi addressed the topic with her students, who she said were also upset by what they saw as the implicit message being delivered by Sanders’s choice of outerwear.”
The guy behind him is wearing cowboy boots also.
Maybe that’s where his privilege is. How dare he use his whiteness and maleness to go to an inauguration without cowboy boots.
But it is kinda amusing that the person next to him is, for all intents and purposes, dressed the same other than the mittens.
What you can’t see from the picture was that their was a print on the back which reads, “I really don’t care, do U?”. Also, the pattern on his mittens is actually a message in the obscure Insular Celtic Primitive Irish language which either reads, “Power of the White Fist” or “I like Fish and Chips”.
I do think that, had a Black man been wearing the same thing, he might have not been admitted until someone (white) vouched for him, or he could have been roundly criticized with racist subtext, about not knowing how to properly dress for this occassion. But, that also could happen if the Black man were dressed in lots of different ways. Bernie Sanders does have the white privilege of it generally being accepted that he dressed that way for the weather, and not that it’s because he doesn’t own, or doesn’t know the proper clothing for a formal occassion.
So, I do think there is white privilege there, but not a kind that Sanders is taking advantage of, exactly. It’s a privilege that should be available to all. Maybe he even made it more acceptable for anyone to dress that way?
You really think that if someone black with enough stature in the political arena (or Biden or Harris’ life) that they got an invitation to the inauguration they would need a white person to vouch for them if they wore a gray coat and mittens? On a day cold enough that people had blankets to stay warm?
I’m not buying it.
Your comment got me thinking a bit… I also think this women is being an idiot and that’s aside from the point that she is using her White Privilege to rant about others’ White Privilege. And I too am a lot more concerned about Q madness because those folks are lost puppies. They’re not going to be coming back to the real world.
OTOH, I think most of these woker-than-woke over-reactionaries like the SF teacher would likely fall in line when the stakes are high enough. I.e. - their wacky beliefs probably wouldn’t keep them from acting logically with regard to avoiding violent coup attempts and adopting pandemic best practices like mask-wearing and social distancing.
I live in SF so I’ve got a lot of this all around me. It was here I discovered that after a lifetime of political liberal-ness, I was suddenly a right-winger IOW, this is the first time I’ve lived somewhere where people are actually to the Left of me.
It gets irksome but I’m just annoyed by it, not worried. A lot of it is just virtue signaling taken to the next level–making it ones lifestyle and even their raison d’être.
Honestly, at this point in my life, I just shrug at stuff like this. I’m tired of the sanctimony, and the constant need of a certain contingent of leftists to analyze everything to goddamn death. Just let people enjoy the fucking Bernie memes.
Also, I’ve noticed a lot of this kind of thing gets picked up on Yahoo news. The other day it was an article about how racist it is to put Tubman on the $10 bill. Before that it was an article about how the alien in the film Alien represents vicious stereotypes about black people. I don’t read Yahoo news myself, it’s just every time I’m pointed to something stupid, it seems to come from Yahoo news.
After reading the whole thing three times I’m still unsure what she’s asserting or upset about, exactly.
I think it is possible that she’s just allowed herself to become confused and allowed herself to think that there is no difference between a display of a privileged white male and a display of white male privilege.
Oh. My. Gawd. And they’d have another thing to complain about if he came in a $5,000 suit. Reminds me of some twilight zone where people keep seeing stuff that doesn’t exist. I mean, white privilege may exist, but here?? Nah.
Um, yes. I think all 180 ambassadors who attended are probably not so recognizable to all those providing security. And being recognizable is not really protection, at least from initial harassment. I’m sure I’ve seen accounts like this from Black politicians, but this will have to do for the moment:
There are countless similar examples where relative fame, wealth, and privilege don’t protect Black men from being stopped and their presence in a particular area questioned.
To repeat, though, I’m not saying Sanders did anything wrong. Just that, yeah, he has white privilege.
IOW, this is the first time I’ve lived somewhere where people are actually to the Left of me.:strip_exif(true):strip_icc(true):no_upscale(true):quality(65)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gmg/AWZADI5OU5EA5BKB4QIL4IECCQ.jpg){kind=link}