Independent Vermont Senator and potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is claiming that many of his Democratic opponents want racially and sexually diverse candidates “regardless of what they stand for.”

In a lengthy profile for GQ Magazine, Sanders once again railed against what he calls “identity politics,” telling the magazine that he believes his opponents care only about fielding candidates based on race, gender, or sexuality:

In a Democratic Party that is increasingly deriving its energy—not to mention its votes—from minorities and women, Sanders remains a critic of identity politics and a firm believer that issues of race, while important, are not as salient and determinative as those of class. “There are people who are very big into diversity but whose views end up being not particularly sympathetic to working people, whether they’re white or black or Latino,” he said. “My main belief is that we need to bring together a coalition of people—of black and white and Latino and Asian-American and Native-American—around a progressive agenda which is prepared to take on an extraordinarily powerful ruling class in this country. That is my view. Many of my opponents do not hold that view, and they think that all that we need is people who are candidates who are black or white, who are black or Latino or woman or gay, regardless of what they stand for, that the end result is diversity.” He hastened to add that “diversity is enormously important,” but there was a bigger goal: “to change society and create an economy and a government that work for all people.”

Fact Check: The only arguable “opponent” of Sanders who has said anything like this is Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti, who told Time Magazine that the 2020 Democratic nominee “better be a white male” because “When you have a white male making the arguments, they carry more weight.”

Sanders has a long history of dismissing the concerns of women and minorities, obsessing over white voters, as well as seeming to excuse racism.

After the 2016 election, Sanders hit a similar theme when he told a crowd of supporters “It’s not good enough for somebody to say ‘hey I’m a Latina vote for me’ that is not good enough,” and went on to add “It is not good enough for somebody to say, ‘I’m a woman, vote for me.'”

And although Sanders frequently derides “identity politics,” he diagnosed the 2016 defeat as a failure of white identity politics, tweeting shortly after the election that “I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from.”

The Democrats won Brooklyn by 61 points, and Vermont by almost thirty.

In 2017, Sanders appeared to separate minorities from “ordinary Americans,” and subordinate their issues, in an interview with Seth Meyers:

Number one, we have got to take on Trump’s attacks against the environment, against women, against Latinos and blacks and people in the gay community, we’ve got to fight back every day on those issues. But equally important, or more important, we have got to focus on bread-and-butter issues that mean so much to ordinary Americans.

In November, Sanders said that people who weren’t “comfortable” voting for a black candidate were “not necessarily racist.”

Sanders’ latest comments could be particularly problematic in a field that already includes diverse candidates like Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), former Obama cabinet member Julián Castro, and openly gay Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg among others, and none of whom have campaigned on “Vote for me, I’m a black woman/white woman/Latino/openly gay man.”

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