I am not sure that Amy meant anything mean when she said that cycling is primarily an upper middle class sport. I didn't misconstrue it at all; of course, we want everyone to ride! They don't need to be riding $5,000 carbon bikes and they don't need to be riding fast. But to get people who are currently sedentary to ride, the cycling community needs to market differently. I'm not a business person, so I can't address that.
However, when you look at the people who ride for fitness or race, it is primarily upper middle class white people, at least here in the Boston area. I belong to 2 clubs and I don't think I've ever seen an African American on any rides. I'm not sure how we can change this.
This reminds me of something that I witnessed many years ago. We took our kids skiing at Burke Mountain, which is way up in Vermont. It was not a popular place in the early 90s. Since I was X country skiing and they were downhill, we decided to meet up in the lodge. As we were getting ready to leave, we heard a very distinguished looking older African American man say quite loudly to a white kid, "What's the matter? You've never seen a Black man skiing?" We assumed the kid must have been rudely staring at the man, but everyone laughed when he said this.