Howard U professor says being a good ‘white ally’ means acting more like a vigilante mass murderer

A leftist professor is getting attention for calling on white allies of the progressive cause to emulate a man who would eventually be hanged for his crimes.

Howard University Professor of Journalism Stacey Patton believes white allies should take a page out of John Brown’s book. In a blog post titled “John Brown Didn’t Ask Enslaved People How to Be A Good White Ally,” she encouraged white liberals to emulate the radical abolitionist instead of asking minorities how they can be a good “ally.”

According to Britannica.com, Brown was a “militant American abolitionist” who believed slavery to be akin to a declaration of war. He “became obsessed with the idea of taking overt action to help win justice for enslaved Black people,” and would go on to lead a raid on a “proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek.” Five men were brutally murdered during this raid.

Three years later, after having amassed a small group of supporters and enough weapons to arm them, Brown led a raid on the Harpers Ferry armory that would end in his surrender to Col. Robert E. Lee as American military troops broke into the armory and confronted the small militia.

“Brown himself was wounded, and 10 of his followers (including two sons) were killed. He was tried for murder, slave insurrection, and treason against the state and was convicted and hanged,” Britannica explains, adding “John Wilkes Booth, later Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, was present at the execution as a militiaman.”

“So 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?” Patton wrote on the 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.”

Her screed goes on to lament the “exhausting as hell” job of helping white progressives navigate the ever-moving goalposts of allyship.

“Even the well-intentioned versions drag you back into the same cycle of having to translate pain into curriculum. It’s the paradox of white ‘goodness.’ They want to be seen trying, but the trying itself becomes another demand on the people that are already harmed,” she says. “We are not the architects. We are the collateral damage. You don’t ask the people choking on the smoke to explain how to put out the blaze. You go get the damn hose. You stop pretending you don’t see the flames. That’s the real answer: you already know what to do. Be honest: you just don’t want to lose the warmth that fire gives you.”

However, she did make it clear that white allies don’t need to seek the same martyrdom as Brown.

“If you don’t want to die like John Brown, fine. But understand that somebody always does.”

Writer/Columnist

Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to BizPac Review.

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