Johnson’s program was also much less popular than the New Deal. During the New Deal era, poverty was seen as a systemic problem. Change the system and poverty goes away, and so do its symptoms. Not so in the 1960s, when poverty came to be seen as a moral failure. What changed? According to economic research, race has been the single most important predictor of support for American welfare programs. In other words, black poverty has been viewed as a moral failing, whereas white poverty had been viewed as a systemic problem. Therefore, once welfare came to be associated with black poverty, it
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