Howard University professor Stacey Patton published a piece on Sunday that exemplifies why I can’t take Black progressives seriously.
In a Substack post titled “John Brown Didn’t Ask Enslaved People How to Be A Good White Ally,” Patton not only complains about supposed “White allies” asking how they can help the Black community, but insists they should be more like White abolitionist John Brown, who killed 10 other White people in a raid on Harper’s Ferry in an effort to free slaves.
Every few weeks a white person, usually well-meaning, writes to me asking how to be a better ally. They list the right books they’ve read, the relatives they’ve blocked, the marches they’ve attended. They tell me how many friends they’ve lost for saying the right things, how lonely it feels to be the one white person in their circle who “gets it.”
And then, they ask the same exhausting question: “What else can I do?”
It’s a question that always lands heavy. Not because I doubt their sincerity, but because the question itself is still a form of protection that centers the asker’s confusion instead of the target’s danger. It’s a request to be taught, forgiven, and reassured, again and again. It’s another round of homework assigned to the wounded.
Patton characterizes this question as “a form of emotional outsourcing” and “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,” the professor writes. “That’s why the question feels heavy. It’s not that their heart isn’t in the right place. It’s that the framing still centers them. How do I show support? How do I signal I’m good? How do I prove I’m different and one of the good ones?”
Patton explains that when these questions arise, she thinks of John Brown, who “never asked enslaved people how to be a good white ally.”
Picture John Brown strolling onto a plantation, hat in hand, stepping over the blood, the chains, the auction block, and asking a man in shackles, “Excuse me, brother, could you explain how I might leverage my privilege more effectively?” Imagine him interrupting the wails of a mother whose children were just sold off to ask, “Do you have any reading recommendations on how I can be less complicit?” Picture him whispering through the bars of a slave pen, “What hashtag should I use to show my solidarity?”
It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. No sane person would walk into a hellscape and ask the people burning in it to explain the g*****n fire.
She then quotes what Brown said after he was captured, “I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this quilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
Then, she gets to how she believes White people can help Black Americans: “Be like John Brown. Ask yourself, what am I willing to burn so somebody else can breathe?”
Patton claims Black folks cannot figure out how to improve our conditions because “we live inside the matrix of white supremacy, maneuvering through traps set generations ago in laws, schools, offices, and culture.”
She chides White allies for “standing there asking for directions out of a maze you built.”
“That’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: liberation costs. It always has. If you want to stand on the right side of history, you have to give up the life history gave you,” she continues.
There is so much wrong with this.
For starters, we don’t need more people, White, Black, or otherwise, engaging in political violence. America is already a powder keg. More people dying isn’t going to solve our problems. It reminds me of how people like the daughter of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz alerted rioters during the George Floyd protests of the positions of National Guard troops so they could continue destroying property unimpeded.
Like Walz’s daughter, Patton will never have to face the consequences of what she’s asking White people to do. Brown was executed for his actions. In his case, it actually did spark widespread action that eventually culminated in a bloody Civil War that rent the nation apart and brought about the end of chattel slavery.
But today is not October 16, 1859. It is 2025.
Moreover, the fact that Patton is still looking for more White saviors shows the problem with progressives in general: They want Black people to simply surrender their agency to White people, thinking it will somehow work in our favor. From where I sit, this is the very definition of white supremacy — abdicating our responsibility to another group of people.
Yes, it is great to have White people, or anyone else who wants to help. But at the end of the day, it is up to us to move forward.