Bernie Sanders Campaign Should Stop The White Women's Privilege Lectures

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Bernie Sanders Campaign Should Stop The White Women's Privilege Lectures

Last February Jennifer Wright addressed Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders’ problem with women, writing Bernie Sanders’ Sexism Problem for Harper’s Bazaar.

“We have got to look at candidates, you know, not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender and not by their age. I mean, I think we have got to try to move us toward a non-discriminatory society which looks at people based on their abilities, based on what they stand for.” Vermont Public Radio, Feb. 2019

Many women and people of color view that statement as a reaffirmation of the “let white men rule, we’re better at it” theory of political governance. Wright perfects her roast of Sanders, and I encourage to read her piece, while I pull out a few highlights that still simmer in my conscious as a super active person in the Hillary Clinton campaign.

There was a bit of poetic justice when women who worked for Bernie in his 2016 primary campaign came forward to discuss how they were paid less and experienced sexual harassment. You see, with rare exceptions — finally hiring Symone Sanders who served as his national press secretary until late June 2016 — Bernie couldn’t really find many good women of any skin color to hire at a high level. His campaign was run by white men — a feature that he has fixed in his current 2020 run for the Democratic nomination.

Still, when women working in the field and as organizers complained about both wages and fending off sexual advances from male staffers, Bernie grabbed his mop of white hair and defended his inaction saying initially “I was a little bit busy running around the country”. After all, Bernie Sanders said that “women’s issues were a distraction” and Planned Parenthood — who is getting the crap kicked out of them by the Trump administration — is “the establishment”.

Gender Gap Volume Rises As Bernie Bros Tell Progressive Women How To Vote

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Throughout the summer, Sanders and Clinton supporters engaged in a soft glove battle of the sexes with Bernie Sanders'  primarily white male supporters sparring with Hillary supporters of every skin color and white women. The so-called Bernie Bros are focused on Clinton supporters like myself, the so-called spoiled, bourgeoise, white woman. 
We's Not Shouting, But We ARE Digging In
No self-respecting feminist will go to the wall over Bernie's comment about shouting -- although given his role as the shouter-in-chief, his commentary about others is downright amusing. Surely he didn't mean to minimize his opponent in any way. 
That is not the case with the white progressive men Peter Daou and Tom Watson write about over at Hillary Men. The genie is out of the bottle in political gender relations in the Democratic party, with a strong dose of misogyny running wild -- not among Southern Democrats, who barely exist anymore -- but among white male progressives.  
Feminists of a certain age are well aware that many leftist men were frequently sexist as hell. Among Latinos, African Americans, American Indians -- really any group of people except middle-class white women -- a desire for self-determination is embraced by white male progressives as legitimate. Among white women not on welfare or living among the working poor -- women who are typically able to speak and write or run for political office -- a desire for fairness and equity in political representation is considered to be bourgeoise and without a strong political foundation.