san francisco chronicle bernie sanders
The San Francisco Chronicle printed an op-ed on Monday by former faculty professor and faculty district principal Ingrid Seyer-Ochi which claims that self-proclaimed Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) manifests “white privilege, male privilege and sophistication privilege,” as indicated from the viral picture of him on the current presidential inauguration.
Seyer-Ochi, who at present serves as a San Francisco Unified College District highschool instructor, begins the essay — titled “S.F. highschool college students get a lesson in refined white privilege” — by describing the discussions that occurred between her and her college students concerning the current presidential inauguration.
“Sen. Sanders isn’t any white supremacist insurrectionist. However he manifests privilege, white privilege, male privilege and sophistication privilege, in ways in which my college students may see and really feel.” https://t.co/uyAGMpAuR9
— SFChronicle Opinion (@sfc_opinions) February 1, 2021
Analyzing photographs from the January 20 inauguration collectively along with her college students, Seyer-Ochi discusses what they noticed.
“We noticed range, creativity and humanity, and a nation embracing all of this and extra,” she writes. “On the day of the inauguration, Bernie Sanders was barely on our radar. The subsequent day, he was in all places.”
Discussing range and discrimination within the U.S., Seyer-Ochi as soon as once more requested her scholar what they noticed on the inauguration.
“They noticed a white man in a puffy jacket and big mittens, distant not solely in his social distancing, however in his demeanor and apparel,” she writes.
Although she describes her discussions surrounding the which means of the day, the peaceable transition of energy, gender, and the apparel chosen by the attendees, Seyer-Ochi was most struck by how seemingly harmless Bernie Sanders memes that resulted from a snap of the Vermont senator with crossed legs and enormous mittens had grabbed the eye of so many.
“And there, throughout all of our information and social media feeds, was Bernie: Bernie memes, Bernie sweatshirts, infinite love for Bernie,” she writes.
“I puzzled and fumed as a person as I strove to be my absolute best instructor. What did I see? What did I feel my college students ought to see? A rich, extremely well-educated and -privileged white man, exhibiting up for maybe an important ritual of the last decade, in a puffy jacket and big mittens.”
Although she ensures the reader that Sanders “isn’t any white supremacist insurrectionist,” Seyer-Ochi describes him as having manifest “privilege, white privilege, male privilege and sophistication privilege, in ways in which my college students may see and really feel.”
“Once you see privilege, you realize it,” the writer claims she taught her college students weeks earlier.
“But, once they noticed Sen. Bernie Sanders manifesting privilege, when seemingly nobody else did, I struggled to elucidate that disparity.”
Seyer-Ochi then expresses her bafflement as to the rise in recognition of the now-famous picture of Sanders.
“I’m past puzzled as to why so many are loving the photographs of Bernie and his gloves. Candy, sure, the gloves, knit by an educator,” she writes. “So ‘Bernie.’”
The writer then criticizes the “blindness” towards the privilege Sanders “represents” that so many have displayed.
“Not so candy? The blindness I see, of so many (Bernie included), to the privileges Bernie represents,” she writes. “I don’t know many poor, or working class, or feminine, or struggling-to-be-taken-seriously people who would present up on the inauguration of our forty sixth president dressed like Bernie,” she provides.
“Until those self same people had privilege,” she concludes. “Which they don’t.”
Sanders himself, when requested about having turn into a viral meme on social media, had informed host Seth Meyers on Late Evening that he was simply making an attempt to maintain heat.
“I used to be simply sitting there making an attempt to maintain heat, making an attempt to concentrate to what was happening,” Sanders stated earlier this month, after stating that he wasn’t conscious that he had turn into a viral meme in the course of the occasion.
Many on Twitter discovered themselves each puzzled and disturbed by the San Francisco Chronicle essay.
