To most people, Sen. Bernie Sanders‘s Inauguration Day mittens were just a meme, but one San Francisco high school teacher says the public is missing the broader point.
In a recent op-ed, Ingrid Seyer-Ochi said Sanders’s outfit was an example of white privilege, one that was on full display during the swearing-in of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“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,” Seyer-Ochi wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Sanders’s outfit quickly became an internet sensation, with a photo of him with crossed arms being repasted onto other images.
Seyer-Ochi said she was surprised people didn’t pick up on the themes of privilege that were present in Sanders’s attendance, saying he seemed distant at the event, in addition to his casual attire.
“I am beyond puzzled as to why so many are loving the images of Bernie and his gloves. Sweet, yes, the gloves, knit by an educator. So ‘Bernie,'” Seyer-Ochi said. “Not so sweet? The blindness I see, of so many (Bernie included), to the privileges Bernie represents. 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. Unless those same folk had privilege. Which they don’t.”
Seyer-Ochi, a former professor at the University of California-Berkeley and Mills College in Oakland, said she has also been discussing the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol with her students, as well as the diversity of the inauguration.
Seyer-Ochi said she made a point to differentiate Sanders’s privilege with those who stormed the Capitol last month, whom she said she believed were white supremacists.
“Sen. Sanders is no white supremacist insurrectionist,” Seyer-Ochi said. “But he manifests privilege, white privilege, male privilege and class privilege, in ways that my students could see and feel.”
