<p>It wasn’t that the rules were different, but that white America had created a condition of semi-permanent unemployment for Black men, and took away jobs previously held by Black women – who were brought north mostly without their menfolk - and gave them to white men. So conditions for intact Black families in these areas only existed to the degree that they did so prior to World War II (and they did: i.e. Harlem Renaissance), and where non-intact families had come to exist, they received welfare that intact families could not.</p>
<p>White families DID receive welfare - massive welfare - in the form of GI benefits, preferential hiring, lower mortgage rates to buy homes in covenanted (read: all white) neighborhoods in the suburbs, and education - largely closed off to Black men and especially Black women who had been essential to the war effort. And I can speak personally because my father and my family benefited from these welfare programs for decades.</p>