All those whining about how a Black person wouldn’t be able to “get away with” wearing a warm coat to a cold outdoor event should show some actual evidence of such a thing happening, to someone at the same level of celebrity as Bernie, that is not partisan faux outrage. “I bet a Black person wouldn’t be able to do that, therefore white privilege!” does not mean a Black person wouldn’t be able to do that.
Making “allowances for poverty” is a system that requires people to perform their poverty in order to be deemed acceptable. You have to dress “appropriately”, unless we know that you’re poor, in which case we’ll graciously grant you to wear what you want.
Your criticism of “respectful dress” is directly tied to your support of upholding specific, arbitrary, patriarchal cultural norms.
Riiight, narrow the boundaries of acceptable evidence so tightly, then you end up with such a rare circumstance in the first place, that a specific recorded instance is hard to find, and boom, you win. The lifetime of experience of non-white people and women living in the world knowing that they wouldn’t dare to even try such a thing can be freely ignored.
We have pictures of Richard Cheney sitting in his ugly coat at a solemn occasion at Aushwitz. We have examples of black women being told that they can’t wear their natural hairstyles in professional positions. We have the evidence just from living in society.
It’s no one’s burden to come up with recorded examples fitting such narrow parameters.
I think there are a couple issues here that are getting conflated.
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It’s possible to discuss this as an example of how the world is different for old white dudes without actually criticizing Sanders. This is one of the reasons it’s hard to talk about privilege: there’s this perception that saying “your race/gender/other makes things easier for you in some ways that others do not enjoy” is not an attack. It’s a discussion. I benefit from many types of privilege and I am not ashamed of that–but I do want to be aware of them.
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It’s absolutely true that white people, rich people, male people and rich people all have a lot more license to be be “quirky” than people who lack some or all of those things. If you don’t think this is true, you aren’t paying attention. I read, years ago, about how a really posh boarding school and a scrappy Charter school decided to pair up and develop a “Character Education” program–because character is character, right? But it turns out that the scrappy boarding school saw “character” as “ability to conform”: respectful, subservient, obedient behavior towards adults. Careful adherence to the rules. A lack of ego. But for the super-privileged kids? None of that was really a big concern. Run up the down staircase! Sit on the floor instead of in your desk! Wear your clothes backward for a week, Narurto run through the commons. It’s all quirky and fun and creative. Just don’t cheat on a test. This absolutely matches my own experience.
I honestly think there is a really good conversation to be had on the topic, but framing it as being about whether or not Bernie did a Bad Thing is beside the point, in my opinion.
Riiiight. Ignore that Bernie is a well-known politician and ignore any privilege that comes from being famous.
And that has what to do with a famous older person wearing a warm coat to a cold outdoor event? Again, show some type of a proof that a famous old Black person was not able to wear a warm coat to a cold outdoor event, then maybe you would have a point.
How about Leahy, who I mentioned upthread? Not Vermonter enough? 
No one is ignoring that. It’s all part of the system.
Again, narrow the parameters so that they are too hard to meet. Nope, not playing that game. You can redeine the situation to make yourself feel comfortable that there’s no display of societal privilege, but I’m not participating in that process.
Good catch. It’s as if Sanders has made a minor trademark of not wearing the expected “proper” dress overcoat. Another from that same event. Or here a jacket as opposed to a full length coat. He does though seem to own a dressier raincoat/trenchcoat type garment. Seems like the consistent theme is whether it’s weather resistant and he can button or zip it all the way up to the neck.
OK. So then you have nothing at all to show evidence for “white privilege” as opposed to “celebrity privilege,” “politician privilege,” “male privilege” or “rich privilege.”
Or that is was just a cold day and he wanted to be warm, and it has nothing to do with any kind of privilege. The same way that other people in the crowd for that event were also wearing large puffy parkas.
You’re the one making the assertion that Bernie Sanders wearing a gray coat and mittens to the inauguration is a demonstration of his white privilege.
OK, you’ve asserted it. Now it’s up to you to back it up.
Look, I don’t mean to sound antagonistic. But there’s no there there. It was just some dude wearing a coat (and he wasn’t the only one wearing something more practical than fashionable).
If you’re going to persuade us (and here at the SD, we’re mostly open to that possibility in general – we’re not a tough crowd) that this is an example of white privilege, it has to be backed up.
First of all, until this post, you haven’t seen me say anything specific about Bernie’s “grey coat” and I don’t think I’ve said “mittens” either, so I’m not taking on any burden to prove those specific points.
Bernie gets to look frumpy and funny in a way that other people wouldn’t be. There’s no question about that.
And as far as parsing among different kinds of privilege: That’s just a mug’s game, as if they’re all easily and completely distinguishable things. “No, no, we’re talking about racial privilege, so you must come up with a racial example.” “No, no we’re talking about someone wearing a grey coat at the inauguration or similar evnet, so you must come up with a grey coat example.” That’s just a way to play keepaway with the issue.
And that’s all knowing that people without privilege will either never violate those rules in the first place, or if they have violated them, they likely will never find themselves in that position.
White privilege, male privilege, wealth privilege, fame privilege … these are not all completely separate things in the first place. They’re all linked together. Being white will magnify your wealth privilege and vice versa.
When I was in graduate school, I noticed a lot of students tended to look at things through whatever academic lens they were concentrating on. In my Gender and Science Fiction class (yes, that was a thing), I remember one particularly story I vehemently argued was about miscegenation while another student argued fervently that it was about enforcing gender roles. At the time, I was busy researching a lynching and he was busy with his thesis on gender roles.
I happen to think social privilege theory is a great lens to examine how entitlement and benefits for one group, often at the expense of another group, influences power and oppression. But very often people in academia have a difficult time viewing the world through a lens other than their favorite social theory. I think that’s the case here.
By the way, there are certain kinds of people who are known to wear cowboy boots in the halls of Congress. They tend to be white men from Texas who are asserting their white, male, Texan identities. Needless to say, they aren’t challenged on that bit of eccentricity. In fact, they tend to be admired for it.
And that is where your argument fails, because again, no one has shown that a Black person in the same situation would not have been able to wear a parka over a suit. You repeating it does not make it so.
Fair enough.
I just have a really hard time seeing how anyone would take Sanders’ attire as a manifestation of any kind of privilege, though (and I know some will say that’s because of my own privilege, of course).
I admit that I do not believe that Ms. Seyer-Ochi’s students saw Sanders’ coat and mittens as example of white privilege, or any kind of privilege, until she coached them to do so.
And in our commendable zeal to recognize and root out white (and male, and wealth, and fame) privilege, we should be careful not to convince ourselves that something is there when it just isn’t.
Move along, folks. There really is nothing to see here.
Hey look at that. A Black woman wearing a large white/grey parka in the background at Obama’s inauguration.
I guess a Black person would be able to wear similar dress after all.
Show me a black person who is wearing a parka without criticism. It’s just as fair. Both examples are unlikely to be found because black people in that position are going to deliberately avoid putting themselves in that situation.
We already know that institutional privilege exists, and we know that women and non-white people choose their attire carefully because of it. Why should I have to prove every posible permutation of it in order to talk about the evident fact of it?
Just did.
Want!