Yeah, as a 看得懂汉字的 native English speaker, seeing 族 used to describe both ethnicity and things as mundane as e.g. 开车族 always hits in a weird way. Reading 弱势族群 there would have struck me as the speaker looking down on them. I wouldn’t have got the “for good reason”, not because it’s not literally there, but rather because I probably would have instinctively interpreted the writer as not being sympathetic - something like “all those damn poor people” as if he were to continue on in an ignorant rant about his taxes going to undeserving people on welfare or something. 弱势群体 definitely doesn’t have that connotation.

Anywho, thanks for sharing.