I said 'race' because of the comment made. Why would he assume he grew up poor?? There was nothing in the video that told you he grew up poor. The man didn't scream 'i'm doing this because i'm destitute'. The poster made a weak assumption based on the man's race, So he did bring race into it!!
Moving on :lol:
I actually didn't interpret the statement that way at all. The exact statement in question was "...because of his poor child hood."
To me that seems like a pretty clear a reference to the quality of the childhood, not the wealth of the childhood. (How can a childhood even be poor from a wealth perspective? People, families, organizations, businesses etc. are capable of having or not having wealth, but a childhood? It isn't an entity and so can not have wealth).
It also makes sense when you think about it. You don't go in front of a judge and describe the wealth of your clients family except in reference to how it affected the quality of the clients childhood:
So you don't say "Your honor, my client grew up in a happy stable home. Yeah, he was poor because his parents made minimum wage their whole lives and one of them was frequently out of work, but dangit, they still managed to make a decent life for their child and that is why you should go easy on him."
Instead, you go to the judge and say "Your honor, you should go easy on my client because his childhood was a nightmare. Sure, his family was wealthy, but that just allowed his mother to drink and pop pills constantly. This resulted in her not noticing that her lazy brother, that lived with them, was sexually abusing my client almost every day of his young life. As a result of this my client became fat and was bullied in school and verbally abused and regularly beaten by his father. He had nobody in his young life to turn to for help. This poor childhood is why he has done this horrible act of which he was found guilty. Please consider this and be lenient in your sentencing."
As you see, what you use to get sympathy is not the level of wealth itself, but rather the quality of life that results from that wealth (or lack of wealth). This, plus the inherent grammatical error that would be required to interpret it your way, is why I think it was always about quality, not wealth.