Those are both related to a history of redlining. A huge factor in the wealth gap is due a lack of home ownership. Even now, real estate agents steer black customers away from the neighborhoods with good schools: https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-...
If someone's grandparents were forced to live in shitty housing and were never able to own their own home, that puts the next couple generations at a disadvantage. Most people who are able to afford a down payment on a home get financial assistance from their families. If one generation cannot help with that down payment, the next one sure as hell won't.
That point about the black academic gap is quite silly, because you're either ignoring or unaware of the fact that black students are punished more than white students for similar infractions in school: https://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/at-school-it...
I could go on all day finding more examples of other discrepancies that are current.
> As an immigrant that landed in US post 2000 with $1000 to my name and a tenuous F1 situation, all this sounds like ancient history.
Yes, my family did that too. However, we are not black, and as a result, we didn't have to put up with banks refusing to give us a mortgage when we wanted to move to a wealthy suburb that had excellent public schools.
You came in on a student visa? That means you had a certain amount of social capital to rely on in your home country. How many people in your original country were too poor to apply for even an F1 visa and shoot for a richer life in America? Your experience is not remotely analogous to the continuing problems of racial discrimination faced by black Americans. You have absolutely not faced the same problems with building up intergenerational social capital that they have. My family made it out of China, but millions of Chinese peasants in the rural countryside, even if they are equally talented and hardworking as my family, will never have the chance. They're too far behind. That's why I chose to focus on the historical legislation. You may think that it doesn't matter, black people should've pulled themselves up by their bootstraps by now, but it doesn't matter if they lack the same headstart.