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I suppose that Franklin Roosevelt really knew what was he was doing when he thought up this brilliant Ponzi scheme.
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It had been happening even before him! But yes he accelerated it. Here is some info on this, more can be accessed from the link on my tag line.

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I ran across a 2001 dissertation on the life of Forrester Blanchard Washington, a noted black social worker in the 20s, 30s and 40s and bitter opponent of dependency welfare. Washington had fought all his life for equal employment, education, equal wages and economic sufficiency. In 1933 He was appointed by President Roosevelt to a top position at FERA (Federal Emergency Relief Agency) and reported to Harry Hopkins (a future Soviet spy in the Roosevelt administration) (97).

His article [Washington's] was based in part on 1933 data from from a FERA [another Relief agency during the Great Depression] survey which showed although Negros constituted 9.4% of the population, they made up 18.4% of the citizens receiving relief, this trend had begun before the great depression. Washington explained that only the Federal government, which was responsible for this circumstance, could remedy it. The government had become a "subsidizer for southern and northern, rural and urban, employees of Negro labor during the off-season in the industry."

As Washington explained: In the South many plantation owners have deliberately placed the Negro on the relief rolls during the "lay-off season", when plowing, chopping and cotton-picking were over and in the North, as well as in the South, manufacturing concerns have forced him on the relief rolls by instituting a color bans, either in the open or under cover, when they think public opinion is opposed to the employment of Negro labor, while white men and women are out of work (Washington 1933, p. 178). (97)

Washington clearly saw:

"The danger of making the Negro, as a race, a chronic dependant." (97)

The dissertation concludes that:

"In his FERA position Washington began to have deeper appreciation for the controlling effects of the socio-economic structures and recognized that African Americans were becoming pawns in a system that was destructive of their social welfare and future." (97)

"He correctly perceived that empowerment of the African American people was not an agenda of the Roosevelt Administration."

"Moreover, he could not be parity to a political processes that were creating dependencies in African Americans and putting them in the position of being blamed for a fate over which they had no control."

"He made a moral decision to leave his position after about 7 months." (97)

A dissertation from the Miller Center at the University of Virginia published a lengthy legislative history of welfare confirming this (108):

"Because cotton remained the least mechanized agricultural product until the 1960s, the demand for plentiful and steady cheap labor was higher in the South than, for example, in the agriculture-rich West, and a system of paternalism, or clientelism, evolved after the abolition of slavery as the most inexpensive way to retain a steady and loyal labor supply."

"recipients are made to serve as maids or to do day yard work in white homes to keep their checks. During the cotton-picking season, no one is accepted on welfare because plantations need cheap labor to do cotton-picking behind the cotton-picking machines."

"The development of a national welfare system in the 1930s threatened to provide a substitute to, and thus undercut the value of, the benefits of paternalism to workers. For this reason, southern congressional representatives were vested with the responsibility of ensuring that social welfare programs were either limited or under local control. Local control was important for many reason, among them was that benefits could be made to function in tandem with the seasonal needs of agricultural In short, voting for expanded welfare with greater local control, southern representatives were able to supply key constituents with discretionary resources." (108)

So we find white farms and industrialists using welfare for economic advantage, so they could pay African Americans the absolute minimum for a shorter amount of time while making sure they wouldn't leave and find a better paying situation.

The African American family also suffered during the dark days of slavery, where families were broken up and marriage was outlawed. Sometimes to keep slaves in order owners would threaten to sell a family member. But the family ties still stood strong; after the civil war it was reported:

African Americans also traveled in search of family members separated from them during slavery. One man walked 600 miles from Georgia to North Carolina to find his family. To locate relatives, people placed advertisements in newspapers. The Freedmen's Bureau helped many families reunite. A Union officer wrote in 1865, "Men are taking their wives and children, families which had been for a long time broken up are united and oh! such happiness." Freedom allowed African Americans to strengthen their family ties. Former slaves could marry legally. They could raise families without fearing that their children might be sold. Many families adopted children of dead relatives and friends to keep family ties strong. (94)

Isn't it an amazing thing that despite every effort by the southern racists to separate and destroy the black family, using physical force, they were unable to accomplish in hundreds of years what the scourge of welfare has done in a few decades?