[asveikau]

The issue is, a lot of problems have been nominally "fixed". But the black community on average has not caught up with the gaps created and re-enforced by these earlier systems. eg. They didn't get to participate as much as white peers in housing booms due to redlining, blockbusting, etc. So if you started out European-American in 1930 [random 20th century year], or having the same wages and being black in that same year, odds are pretty good descendants of the latter are doing poorer, due to multiple racist housing policies.

[lolinder]

If they haven't caught up, that's presumably true as measured by several concrete metrics, correct? So the question still is: why target skin color (the correlated trait) instead of those metrics?

I'm not staking out a position here, I haven't made up my mind myself. I'm just pointing out that OP raised a valid point which you didn't really address.