While health, education, decent housing, and employment are something that most of us would agree are fundamental to all people, what is a primary reason that these have historically been denied to many people in the United States?

The reason is white privilege

Explanation:

The white privilege simply means refers to legal and systemic advantages given to white people by the United States, such as citizenship, the right to vote or the right to buy a house in the neighborhood of their choice.

White privilege has been the cause of power of accumulated power, giving that the ability to covert wealth has been a white privilege for example study shows that the median white person who went to college has 7.2 times more wealth than the median black person who went to college, and 3.9 times more than the median Latino person who went to college. Nor do they close the gap when they work full time, or when they spend less and save more.

The gap, instead, relies largely on inheritance which are passed from one generation to the next