"One manifestation of systemic inequality was a two-track welfare system rooted in a “family wage” ideal that figured the worker as a full-time breadwinner who supported children and a dependent, non-wage-earning wife at home-an ideal from which most people of color were excluded. When unemployment insurance was enacted in 1935, for example, it did not extend to agricultural and domestic workers, whom reformers did not see as independent, full-time breadwinners, and on whom the South’s low-wage economy depended. As a result, 55 percent of all African American
workers and 87 percent of all wage-earning African American women were excluded from one of the chief benefits of the New Deal."