A San Francisco high school teacher is being criticized for saying that Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Exhibited “white privilege” when he attended President Biden’s inauguration in a casual coat and gloves and caught the attention of the internet.
“Senator Sanders is not a white supremacist rebel. But he manifests privilege, white privilege, male privilege and class privilege, in ways that my students could see and feel,” wrote Ingrid Seyer-Ochi, a former UC professor Berkeley, in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle.
PROFESSOR WHO MADE BERNIE SANDERS GLOVES NOW WORKING WITH VERMONT’S TEDDY BEARS COMPANY TO DO MORE
Social media users found a photo of Sanders, 79, looking cold and moody at the opening, so funny that they circulated it for days, making jokes and memes. Seyer-Ochi wrote that she “was intrigued and irritated” by this.
Former presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) Sits in the Capitol stands before Joe Biden took office as 46th US President on January 20, 2021, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
((Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images))
“We talked about gender and the possible meanings of the costume chosen by Vice President Kamala Harris, Dr. Jill Biden, grandchildren Biden, Michelle Obama, Amanda Gorman and others. We made reference to the warriors that inspire these women, the colors of their education degrees and their monochromatic sets of pure power, “wrote Seyer-Ochi, referring to his students.
“And there, in all of our news and social media feeds, was Bernie: Bernie memes, Bernie sweatshirts, endless love for Bernie. I got confused and irritated as an individual as I struggled to be my best teacher possible,” she continued. “I don’t know many poor people, or the working class, or women, or people who struggle to be taken seriously who would appear in the possession of our 46th president dressed as Bernie. Unless those same people had the privilege. They don’t.”
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Seyer-Ochi received a lot of criticism online for his article.
“Ugh. SJWs are so humorless that they need to take a stupid and funny meme and turn it into a meta-narrative about the privilege of whites,” wrote RealClearPolitics President Tom Bevan in Twitter.
“What a stupid and terrible article: everything based on how Bernie dressed. As stupid and crude as it is, it represents a large and growing sector of left-wing liberal thought,” wrote journalist Glenn Greenwald in Twitter.
“Wait, so Bernie has now been attacked for being too chic, and not fancy enough, while wearing exactly the same undefined winter coat ??” The Hill’s “Rising” host Krystal Ball wrote in Twitter.
“Ingrid Seyer-Ochi in Vermont, this is actually a formal attire. Leave Vermont and Bernie alone,” wrote Lisa Langsdorf of GoodEye PR in Twitter.
Sanders gave up on the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, which Biden ended up winning.