A lot of the laws and regulations especially in the South regarding. Police authority and how they operates developed due to a desire to oppress and keep in check black people. I don’t think the negative attitudes towards poor white people necessarily negates that that reality.

The US is rather unique in the western world in how little it does for poor people. I don’t think you can realistically begin to explain this without making them large black population and racism part of the story. Southern strategy and all that. Paul Krugman, the Nobel winning economist has a book going into quite a lot of detail of how racism hindered the development of a modern welfare state in America. I mean it has even gone so far as “welfare” being a derogatory word with strong negative connotations in American English.

In my own native language it is an extremely positively charged word. But then again people associate different things with the word.