Close personal contact with blacks itself undermined white missionary racial condescension

Evidence

Moore’s close relationship with blacks did not permit her to accept notions of racial inferiority or the validity of segregation laws; she praised attitudes of racial self-help among blacks. Her exceptional case, and to some extent that of other well-liked white women missionaries such as Helen Jackson in Richmond and Jennie Peck in Dallas, did not reflect the same tensions and power: struggles as were exhibited between the black ministerial-led conventions and the men of the ABHMS. Moore’s daily contact with blacks and her humble personal style did not suggest issues of control or racial hierarchy. While not always in complete agreement with black ministers, Moore wrote of them in her autobiography: “We never argued or fussed about race or sex, we understood each other and each tried to help the other. It is true that there was a quiet understanding that we all belonged to the same family.” — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 465

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Reading white missionary efforts only as racist paternalism erases Black leaders’ agency — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 436; Black missionary women’s public speaking directly contested white stereotypes of immorality and childishness — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 483; Contact with the white world collapses the Negro’s ego into other-directed behavior (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Even apartheid-era unequal-status contact reduced White prejudice #corroborates (0.88) — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 226
• Mere intergroup contact without equal status worsened racial prejudice #complicates (0.85)
• Segregation confined black-white female contact to the servant-served relation #qualifies (0.82)
• Contact with the white world collapses the Negro’s ego into other-directed behavior #complicates (0.80)
• Black missionary women’s public speaking directly contested white stereotypes of immorality and childishness #expands (0.75) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 483
• Interviewed black servants suppressed negative truths out of politeness #complicates (0.72)