In principle, it makes no more sense to treat people differently based on their skin color than it would to treat them differently based strictly on their eye color.
The material about the history and development of urban housing in the U.S. explains how discriminatory housing practices throughout the 20th century made it difficult for minorities (especially people of color) to achieve similar social and economic status even long after legal changes prohibited housing discrimination. First, discriminatory housing practices lasted much longer than they should have because many communities simply found ways of ignoring the law more subtly. More importantly, the documentary explained that, to a great extent, much of the current (continuing) economic disparity between whites and blacks in the U.S. is a function...
Even today, black families who earn the same as white families are much less economically and professionally successful than white families and they have higher unemployment rates and criminal records. However, when white families are compared with black families earning the same and also whose accumulated family wealth is equal, all of those statistical differences disappear completely.
The documentary makes very clear that race is much more about perception than biological reality and that the actual discriminatory impact of racism on minorities in America is much more complex and has lasted much longer than many people might think based on reading the history of civil rights legislation in the U.S.
