This has allowed the South i n particular to have an exaggerated effect on social welfare policy and historically for its racial practices to influence social welfare policy even at the national level. Southerner senators in particular historically have been very influential in social welfare policy working to make sure that such policies like the Social Security of Act of 1935 was structured to allow their interests to be protected. So domestics, migrant workers, sharecroppers were excluded from retirement insurance under Social Security and public assistance was structured so that states could set benefit levels and determine eligibility so that southern states in particular to attune welfare to their share-cropping economies. MFP eventually got deemphasized in the face of the backlash and community action itself overall was increasingly marginalized in the federal budget. Even the guaranteed income faced race-based opposition .
Welfare continues to reflect the racial cast of social policy debates.
In this way, welfare policy discourse is latently encoded with racism , attributing to African-American recipients, attitudes and behaviors, that are based on assumptions about race, but doing so without ever actually explicitly stating them. Welfare reform today has significant disproportionate impact on poor, minority communities as recipients of color are finding it harder to get jobs and leave welfare . Welfare reform reflects a failure to seriously consider that jobs are less readily available for poor minorities. This oversight is arguably attributable to the latent racism in welfare policy discourse that assumed the primary reasons for African-Americans and other minorities of color on welfare was attitude, culture, values and not the inequalities of the economic and job markets. Unfortunately, this is likely to only further its marginalization and decrease the willingness of the broader public to deal with the problems recipients are confronting under reform.