White northern Baptist philanthropy mixed guilt and self-interest yet still blocked black self-help.

Evidence

“We cannot allow this host of people [blacks] to roam the country, untaught and unchecked, or our lives will not be safe. It is our fault that they are ignorant and untrained, and it is but just that we do what we can to remedy the evil we have wrought, although we cannot rub out all traces of it.” And, so, they put forth efforts to help the already eager people to fit themselves for the exigencies of life. They founded schools to teach them to teach themselves, and things began to look bright… . A strange phase of the matter is, that, while all along, the understanding has been that the colored people were, as soon as prepared, to help in the educating, uplifting and upbuilding of their own people, and to do generally for themselves what had been done for them, the white portion of the nation is inclined to refuse them the right to do this, and only allows them to work under protest. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 336

Categorization

• SHARE: The irony she exposes - whites founded schools to train blacks to lead but then refused to let them lead - is exactly the kind of point to send to someone working on white paternalism or philanthropy.
• QUESTION: This specific contradiction between benevolent rhetoric of self-help and refusal to cede control could deepen the respectability framework.
• XREF: connects to: Denied inclusion within white institutions deepened black Baptist separatism — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 247; White guilt triggers self-preoccupied redemption-seeking rather than concern for Black well-being — Janet K. Swim and Deborah L. Miller, White Guilt: Its Antecedents and…, 35; Northern missionaries aimed to discipline black religious emotionalism and home life — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 185

Broader Connections

• White guilt triggers self-preoccupied redemption-seeking rather than concern for Black well-being #expands (0.82) — Janet K. Swim and Deborah L. Miller, White Guilt, 35
• Northern missionaries aimed to discipline black religious emotionalism and home life #exemplifies (0.80) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 185
• Denied inclusion within white institutions deepened black Baptist separatism #corroborates (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 247