White mission aid treated blacks as both mission field and threat to national order
Evidence
Yet the humanitarian motives of the northern women were offset by a host of fears, veiled in language of patriotism, self-interest, and cultural chauvinism. Acknowledgment of self-interest resonates in the passage quoted above—in the emphasis on “our” laws, “our” land, “our” government. Underlying the women’s missionary work was fear of tumultuous change in their own society. Like the men of the ABHMS and other Protestant evangelicals, they viewed the African American population simultaneously as a vast and fertile mission field and as a threat to national stability. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 528
Categorization
- XREF: Parallels the simultaneity of condescension and fear the reader studies in respectability-as-racial-control. — connects to: Blacks were uniquely cast among alien groups as loyal potential allies — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 538; National mission ideology has a natural affinity to race-thinking — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 479; The Christian civilizing mission presupposed racial progressivism in principle — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 49 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- National mission ideology has a natural affinity to race-thinking
#expands(0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 479 - Blackness itself is criminalized as a threat irrespective of acts
#expands(0.75) - The Christian civilizing mission presupposed racial progressivism in principle
#qualifies(0.70) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 49 - Black liberation demands are criminalized while identical white demands are applauded
#expands(0.70) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 346