His (psychologist Allport) research showed that racial prejudice tends to decline when different racial groups have sustained contact with one another under certain conditions – including sharing roughly equal status and belonging to a community that is working together on a common purpose that transcends race.

If that sounds abstract, consider the 2000 film “Remember the Titans.” Based on true events, it’s about a coach’s effort to integrate a high school football team in suburban Virginia during the early 1970s. The team’s White and Black players loathe one another at first, but their prejudices evaporate as they come together for a larger purpose: winning a championship. Cue the swelling music. That’s contact theory at work.

One of Allport’s key findings was that bringing White and non-White people together to talk about race had a limited impact. But getting them together for a larger purpose — a sports team, fighting alongside one another in the military, battling addiction in a 12-step program or even playing in a jazz band together —creates the best conditions for reducing racial prejudice.

Aunt Mary and I changed in part because some of these same dynamics were at work in our relationship. We were forced to share contact with one another over time because of a larger purpose that went beyond race: taking care of my mom.

My mom required constant visits from us to provide emotional support and make sure she was treated well by the caregivers who she lived with after Crownsville closed. As Aunt Mary and I built a relationship over the years, she gradually stopped being a category — a White woman — and became something else: family.