It’s ok to say that a certain class is deficient. Sometimes we need to accept that. The problem is that, at this moment, the poverty class is deficient due to our capitalistic system that has oppressed them for years. And unfortunately, a large percentage of those are people of color due to years of systematic racism and discrimination (red lining, underfund education, food deserts, etc).

It’s wrong to say that people of color are deficient because they are people of color. It’s (more) correct to say that deficiencies do exist due to the current/historical structure of our society and we should start to find solutions to these issues.

Racism and insults occur when someone says “systematic racism doesn’t exist so giving these people handouts is unfair to me.” We need to accept that inequality exists and do our best as a society to help overcome it.

I think this is one of the main reasons that critical race theory became such a hot button issue. This type of systematic inequality needs to be studied and understood so that reasonable, well researched solutions can be discovered. The privileged class is against it because they want to remain privileged; they want the rest of the upper/middle class to put their head in the sand and ignore that the systematic issues exist in the first place, so that fingers don’t end up pointed at them and things won’t ever need to change. It’s easier to demonize the topic all together than to form actual arguments against equality.