The Making of a Good White - E-thesis - Helsinki.fi

who lived near enough to be able to commute. For the residents, the risks
involved in the transgression of these rules were considerable, since jealous
neighbours frequently informed the social workers of these offenders.
Still, it was a risk the residents were willing to take.
It is conceivable that the residents saw themselves as deserving servants
because they were White. But a more important reason for these
offences probably lies in the cleanliness required of the home and family
of apprentice Whites. The burden of these exhausting expectations fell
on the women, and often the only way to cope with them was to have
domestic help. Therefore, keeping coloured servants at all costs can be
seen as compliance with the prevailing ideals rather than as a strategy of
resistance.
The Company, however, regarded the obstinacy of the residents in this
matter as serious and of great importance. The fear that the continuous
presence of a coloured element would lead to racial mixing and the moral
degradation of the area underlies the social workers’ reports.
The situation posed a difficult problem. As Whites, the people of Epping
were entitled to have domestic help in the house and garden to contribute
to the proper standards of cleanliness. One of the perks of being a
middle-class White was to have a live-in maid, and according to the ideal,
a White woman was rather more suited to giving orders than doing harsh
and tedious physical labour around the house.
This dilemma was worsened by the fact that poor whites were not seen
as being quite as morally mature as other Whites, and were regarded as
much less deserving. This distrust indicates the adolescent status of poor
whites as semi-members of the civilised society. Close connections with
servants were considered dangerous, since they could push the poor
whites away from the threshold of whiteness to which they were so tenuously
holding on.
“In spite of their poverty Mrs. S. employs a coloured servant to do her
laundry. She is too familiar with this servant, whose child sleeps on the
children’s bed.” (CHL, SWR: 1949.)
The emphasis of these prohibitions was thus not only on coloured women
and the fear of mixed racial offspring, but on children as well. In other
words, proximity with the coloureds as such was perceived as a bad thing
for poor whites who were already perceived as existing on the margins of
the category White.
160