"It's more class than it is race"
People talk like that because they have absorbed some of the lies of Marxism. Class doesn't exist. It's not a "thing". The problem in American isn't Race and it isn't Class. It's ideological. You either support the rights of the Individual, or you support tribal politics where one group can be pitted against another group. People who pretend to care about "Class" do not support Individual rights.
I think he meant within the AA sector where the ‘just-us’ bros make big bux off the rabble by fomenting more dissention among those that have been oppressed by CRA 64.
I think he means it in the American sense – a type of behavior – and not in the traditional, sense of no mobility from the circumstances of your birth American "class" has to do with accepting opportunities and making the effort to join the system, working the system and providing for oneself and one's family, behaving civilly, not expecting to be taken care of nor to get away with bad behavior.
Americans have heretofore prided themselves on "class mobility" -- being able to rise because of achievement, to be able marry up if you are worthy, to be promoted or achieve prosperity by hard work.
There was indeed systemic racism under Jim Crow laws, when blacks could not get jobs, serve alongside whites in the military, or join trade unions, let alone country clubs or move to white neighborhoods. And the social habits died hard; it took a long time even after equality laws were fought for and changed for a percentage of whites to change their discriminatory behavior. But half a century and several generations have passed now since the end of segregation and legal double standards. It's really time for both races to stop going to race as their first explanation for everything having to do with human interactions.