Yes sarcasm but there's also the fact that well... racial excuse making is a very elitist thing. It's always the social elites who are spouting the bullshit excuses of "I'm not racist but..."
Look today at Trump supporters. The candidate of white racial resentment. Real lowbrow stuff right?
And yet...Average Trump supporter median income: $72,000
Average Clinton supporter median income: $61,000
Average Sanders support median income: $61,000
Average American income: $56,000
But honestly, why should this surprise us? The man was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and bitches about how the government helps immigrants, i.e. the very poor.
Casting the desires of the elites as some sort of populist message has a long tradition in American history. Go back to the Vietnam war and people act like it was all about the well to do hippies that opposed the war. But Martin Luther King wasn't shot while talking to hippies about ending the Vietnam war, he was killed while preaching his message to a poor audience. It was the populist candidate's supporters who rioted in '68 against the support of the war. It was the candidate of the wealthy who kept the war going after the election.
Or go back even farther. It wasn't the rich people in Atlanta or Richmond who refused to fight a war to preserve slavery. It was the people in West Virginia, East Tennesse, Rural Texas. The elites went along with bullshit about states rights and how it was best for the slaves. The poor people saw it for what it was, a bunch of asshole elitists.
Heck go back to the start of this country. You have Pennsylvania which was pushing towards universal suffrage really early on. It's not coincidence that they were the ones moving early towards emancipation and decent treatment of the indians. Meanwhile you have the southern legislatures fighting tooth and nail against popular suffrage while they did everything in their power to mistreat the indians and they kept blacks in chains.
Yet people who take the storyline hook line and sinker from the rich elites will delude themselves into saying that they are the common man.