Civics: “Barker says donors would ask politicians on the phone directly: “What’s your race?” And then: “I’m sorry, I am restricting my investments to women of colour only.”

The Times:

Now that Barker is airing the party’s dirty linen in her book, I ask if she fears accusations of racism from her former colleagues. “I mean, yes, that’s a risk,” she says. “I’m not really worried about stuff like that anymore, though, because once you’re cancelled and you say what you really think, you get all sorts of responses and at some point it stops having any meaning — and I know who I am and I know that I’m not racist.”

This was the first time Barker had heard about RCN but suddenly all the pieces dropped into place. “Once I learnt what it was, I realised the extent of its influence on how Democrats talked,” she says. “RCN was a way to pivot every issue to identity. It trained politicians to think of every issue as an identity issue first and foremost. RCN was an entire intellectual framework that reduced agenda items on the progressive wish list to racial politicsiạ

Barker says donors would ask politicians on the phone directly:

“What’s your race?” And then: “I’m sorry, I am restricting my investments to women of colour only.”