Teacher’s Essay About Bernie’s Mittens Being “White Male Privilege” Gets Roasted

@dionnewarwick/Twitter

February 2, 2021, 9:30 am

Please, if you have a super hot take you want to publish on the Internet with your real name attached, run it by your most critical friend first. Some people are so isolated in their bubbles, they don’t realize they’re about to ruin their name forever by sharing a thought that should have been kept to wine night with the gals.

Advertisement
Hide

A San Francisco High School teacher named Ingrid Seyer-Ochi is getting her essay for the San Francisco Chronicle op-ed that was published on Sunday. It’s about the inauguration and the Bernie Sanders memes that followed, so not only is it a bad opinion, it’s coming in pretty late. 

Advertisement
Hide

In the, she says that she works with her students to identify and name privilege in the news and that it worked pretty well when they discussed the January 6th insurrection, and how the MAGA folks and QAnon white people were treated: shockingly gently. She should have stopped there.

For inauguration day, she asked her students to discuss what they saw in the way people were dressed and zeroed in on the fact that many women of color and Vice President Kamala Harris were all dressed to the nines and Bernie Sanders was in his usual parka and mittens.

“Sen. Sanders is no white supremacist insurrectionist,” Seyer-Ochi wrote. “But he manifests privilege, white privilege, male privilege, and class privilege, in ways that my students could see and feel.”

Advertisement
Hide

To be honest, I can see why women might be annoyed by the level of attention Sanders got during a momentous occasion for so many other people. But he didn’t wear a parka, cozy mittens, and stay aloof to be rude—he’s 79 years old, it’s winter in D.C. and we’re in the middle of a pandemic!

Seyer-Ochi insists her students saw what she saw, after she coached them a little bit.

“I puzzled and fumed as an individual as I strove to be my best possible teacher. What did I see? What did I think my students should see?””Seyer-Ochi wrote. “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.”

Advertisement
Hide

She added that the senator “manifests privilege, white privilege, male privilege and class privilege, in ways that my students could see and feel.”

The internet responded to the essay about how you’d expect:

What fresh hell is this take, I don’t even understand. The dude wore mittens and a big coat because it was cold and then he turned around and raised a ton of money for charity https://t.co/q3oWVLxU6e

— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) February 1, 2021

What a stupid and appalling article: all based on how Bernie dressed. As stupid and gross as it is, it represents a large and growing sector of left-liberal thought: https://t.co/ogWOwJ7HoL

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 1, 2021

Advertisement
Hide

imagine having a platform to write about anything, and choosing to dunk on Bernie’s mittens…

— Benjamin Ramm (@BenjaminRamm) February 1, 2021

So he manifests privilege by dressing like an average person instead of an elite. Absurd.

— I liked Bernie before he wore mittens (@RaquelMelodyNJ) February 1, 2021

Advertisement
Hide

Yes all that Vermont mitten privilege he’s been so abusive flaunting. WTF? we must raise our teaching standards ASAP right along w/ our police How is this possible certified teacher

— kathiehopler (@HoplerKathleen) February 2, 2021

“I promise that I’m still incredibly Not Mad about the Warren campaign.”

— “But the politicians…” (John Carpenter Theme) (@mpdeejay1) February 1, 2021

I can kinda understand complaining that we all focused too much on Bernie and not enough on the first BIPOC woman VP… But to actually blame Bernie for that is… a take.

And then to complain that he didn’t get dressed up *enough*? He should have spent more money on clothes?

— Josh G (@jurfinkel) February 1, 2021

Advertisement
Hide

Also, Bernie wasn’t the only person at the inauguration who was dressed more for practicality than style:

Seyer-Ochi is certainly famous for her ideas now, which has made a lot of people interested in her life. The Daily Mail looked up her salary, which is high:

Advertisement
Hide

Seyer-Ochi made a whopping $123,682 in 2017 and $130,637 in 2018 from pay and benefits as the former principal of an elementary school, according to TransparentCalifornia.com. Her pay dropped down to a total package of only $69,966 in 2019 – the last year her records appear to be public. 

This one should definitely have stayed in the drafts.

Share this article

*First Published: February 2, 2021, 9:30 am