> If more black people are poor, then more black people will be helped by such policies. If we want to help the poor, let's help the poor.
But I don't think the causes of poverty are universal, and for lots of black people, they are racially driven.
Discussing policies around the "poor generally" while banning discussion of race means abdicating any attempts at integrating schools, means that it is impossible to address discrimination against pepole with black sounding names (50% less likely to get a callback), means that it is impossible to discuss ongoing discrimination in the housing market (rampant, https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-... is a great resource if you want to see what racism in the urban US in the 21st century looks like).
None of those problems - all of which are likely large proximate causes for the racial disparities here - could be addressed if we are only allowed to talk about class and not race.
No compelling reason for why any discussion of race should be taboo has been provided. If the people who are discussing race in this manner are the "most racist", they're doing a pretty bad job at it given the massive disparities benefiting white poeple in pretty much all sectors of society in the country.
It seems ridiculous to me that the solution is to stop discussing race at all in a country that had legally enshrined anti-black discrimination within living memory.