In other words, he thinks opponents of his policies are racist.
Via Politico:
President Barack Obama arrived in Southeast Washington Wednesday with a clear message: White people are poor too.
The conversation that assumes inequality is about poverty — and that both are about race — is a dangerous error that has infected American thinking and warped American politics, he argued in the middle of a long speech hosted by the Center for American Progress.
Although he didn’t offer much in the way of detailed solutions, the comments were some his most substantive on the intersection of race and politics to date and the White House hopes will begin changing the conversation about what the government can and should do about the income gap. […]
“Bad performance and social problems “are now as much about growing up rich or poor as they are about anything else. The gap in test scores between poor kids and wealthy kids is now nearly twice what it is between white kids and black kids,” Obama said, citing one recent study.
“The opportunity gap in America is now as much about class as it is about race,” Obama said. “And that gap is growing. So if we’re going to take on growing inequality and try to improve upward mobility for all people, we’ve got to move beyond the false notion that this is an issue exclusively of minority concern.”