A Howard University professor has urged lefty “white allies” to be more like an infamous Civil War-era abolitionist who was hanged for murder.
Dr. Stacey Patton, a journalism professor, made the remarks in a recent Substack as she argued white liberals should look to up to John Brown as an example instead of asking how to be a better ally.
“When white allies ask, ‘What can I do?’ here’s the answer: Be like John Brown. Ask yourself, what am I willing to burn so somebody else can breathe?” she wrote.
As a militant slave abolitionist, Brown orchestrated the Pottawatomie massacre in 1856 during which five Kansas settlers were executed.
He also led a raid on a federal armory in Virginia in 1859 that killed four locals.
Brown was eventually captured, tried for treason and hanged.
“Brown was a white man who looked around in the mid-1800s and understood, with holy clarity, that slavery was not a political problem but a moral emergency,” Patton argued in her blog post.
“Brown didn’t need a syllabus, a think piece, or a guidebook on allyship. He didn’t need affirmation from black folks that he was one of the good ones. He saw the horror for what it was and decided that ending this racist f–kery mattered more than being understood.”
“He didn’t post a black square or write a thread about accountability. He saw an empire built on blood and decided to make it stop,” she added.
Patton noted that Brown didn’t fit the usual script given he was a “m’f–kn’ gangsta!”
Elsewhere, Patton also called on white allies to stop coming to black people for the answers, arguing: “We ain’t got it.
“And why the hell should we? It’s strange, really, to expect the people still clawing our way out of the wreckage to tell you how to stop building the fire,” she said.
“Every day we live inside the matrix of white supremacy, maneuvering through traps set generations ago in laws, schools, offices, and culture. We’re dodging the shrapnel, and you’re standing there asking for directions out of a maze you built.
“We are not the architects. We are the collateral damage,” she continued.
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