The legacy of racial and gender discrimination persists (like segregated proms in Mississippi). Attitudes are, slowly changing over the course of generations, but it’s a really slow change. Even today, men make more than women for doing the same jobs. Mariko Chang’s recent paper on the wealth gap between black women and everyone else, has some fascinating statistics and graphs showing the current disparities in income (how much money people make) and wealth (how much stuff they have (assets minus their debts)).
An interesting question for students to consider after looking at the graph is why exactly are there these disparities. This may also be a good focus for a Socratic Dialogue.