Originally Posted by cmac2012

While it is likely true that having some gainful work to occupy one's time is generally better than chronic idleness enabled by enough of stipend to survive and not much more, not sure I'm going to give Bundy a nod for being on the right track. His take has it that govt. subsidy is some nefarious doing. More likely is that the multi-generational welfare dependency seen here and there was the end-result of decades of struggle by blacks in Jim Crow America to survive with large pockets barely doing so.

Post emancipation blacks were not often educated to any degree and plenty of whites were disinclined to hire them for anything, aside from some share cropping arrangement. There were plenty of segments of the nation in which poor whites had trouble finding work at various points and I can only imagine it was even harder for blacks.

Implying that perhaps they were better off as slaves is sort of ignoring the fact that it was their enslavement and its aftermath that laid the groundwork for difficulties in the Jim Crow era. I can easily imagine that in various urban centers, doling out a welfare stipend seemed at the time to be a better alternative than having legions of people on the bare edge of survival and turning to crime at times to survive.