I think GP meant 'poor' as in poverty. It goes with your examples of economic hardship and not having the free time for leetcodes. My charitably interpreting 2c, anyway.

I’m not him but I read his comment as simply taking issue with the idea that it’s minorities in particular who don’t have time for that, rather than simply poor people. (The terms are not interchangeable, since there are many wealthy people who are members of a minority, and there are many poor white people)

Financially poor

I think the GP likely meant "poor" in the sense of "destitute", not "poor-quality".

I am 35 years old and never even heard if a high school computer science course. I spent one period of my last semester assisting the network admin with maintenance tasks, which was the closest thing we had to AP computer anything, and only 2 students in my class had the privilege.

How do you not understand that many people with families or other external obligations wouldn’t have the luxury of spending 7 hours a week for multiple months on leetcode?