The author acknowledges every culture has its own upper strata
There are selection mechanisms which can amplify or inhibit the effect of this upper strata - compare Cubans and Mexicans.
For black Americans, that selection mechanism is racism.
In 1921, whatever the black upper class had achieved in Tulsa Oklahoma was burned to the ground by white supremacists - businesspeople were ruined by racism.
Whatever opportunities the black upper class could have made of home ownership were dashed by redlining, the creation of suburbs excluded them from the foundational middle-class wealth building exercise of the 20th century.
Policy created the ghettos at large, with economic pressure for exploitative landlords which incentivized short term earnings to pay the rent, including crime.
For black Americans, the upper strata have never gotten a fair break by design of policy (until very very recently).
Despite this, a lot of black Americans carry the exact same ethos that the author acknowledges - go read Malcolm X.
The idea of 'let's lift ourselves up first' is very old in the black community - the reason it doesn't work is because racist policy always puts the boot on it.

The author comes close to describing the problem, but fails at the solution.
"Let's do better guys!" doesn't work - even when a man as charismatic as Malcolm X proposes it.
Nowadays, the failure of the black family is used to argue against government intervention to assist African Americans.
But the man who pioneered the idea that a failure of the black family would lead to chaos, Daniel Moynihan, actually had genuine policy based ideas on how to rebuild the black family after years of racist destruction of it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-bla...
He would agree 100% with the author and Malcolm X and others who recognize the role of family, but he would put the blame directly at the feet of white supremacy.

I agree that diversification is being weaponized.
The author acknowledged he was speaking from his limited perspective, and again just as a Latino.
One thing I wish would happen is that we would go back to the language of redress for past injustice, not diversity.
That was the original point of affirmative action.
Every social justice movement has scope creep.
We go from "Here are these African Americans, descendents of enslaved people who have been plundered and abused for centuries - we owe them redress and opportunities" to "Diversity is good". From "Black People" (and their very very specific struggle) to "People of Colour" (and feel-good-ism about diversity).
Happens in the LGBTI movement too. It's gone from people with very specific, very innate differences which have made them targets of brutal violence...
... to the LGBTQ+ movement which is about every other teenager feeling quirky for 'experimenting with their sexuality' and 'not using labels' to be 'progressive'.
We even replaced the most observably biological group in the acronym (I - intersex; literally born with mixed chromosomes, genitalia and/or hormone levels) to the most ideological/political letter we could (Q - queer; which is literally defined as something subversive and simply 'different' in a very political sense).

At least as far as black people are concerned, systemic racism is the problem - it has killed the black upper strata for centuries.
It killed the black family and created the conditions which the author properly describes in his essay.
And, like Moynihan said, it needs to be resolved with policy, but instead it's being 'resolved' with policing and mass incarceration, which has exacerbated the problem.