PITS, PTSD, and the Unanswered Call:

Why No John Browns?

I’ve thought about this. And, this essay communication is going to be an exercise in walking a mental tightrope for me. Why? Because I actually want my European American friends and family to read my thoughts and not be repulsed by them. It is quite a challenge.

I am going to ask a question. For me, it will be the second time I have asked this question. The first time I asked this question, it was before 14 live human beings over a Zoom call. I was at the advantage because I could read their facial expressions and body language. They could ask me for clarity to eliminate confusion. I could provide metaphors which make sense in their heads for the concepts in my head. Online, like this Substack, I feel like I am at the dis-advantage. I do not get access to all of the sensory information that is communicated between human beings.

This second time, it is before the internet. I do not know, before an internet-based audience - if I am any more prepared for the answer - or answers - than I was the first time I asked before live human beings.

What I seek to ask is painful. The nature of the pain is difficult to articulate, not because I lack the words to describe the pain, but because so few residents of the United States know the history of the United States. We are history illiterate.

It is hard to hold the quality of discussion my question demands with enough people to reach critical mass. While I am disappointed, and at times very frustrated, my question should not require finding advanced students, but it does.

In fact, my first inquiry was before students I was teaching United States history to. Specifically, it was a class based on my newest publication. “Dec. 3, 1860: The Tensions of the Moment” is the title of the book, which seeks to popularize two speeches delivered by Frederick Douglass detailing his friendship with John Brown.

What I have learned is: despite being wildly popular while alive, in 2025 the lives of both men are relatively unknown. Yes, many remember these names, in passing, from inside of their high school history books, but did not seriously wrestle with the ideas they espoused. Both men are footnotes - curious blights of deviation from the driving ethos of the American experiment. They are proof that citizens can think and act differently than the groupthink without changing the course of the experiment.

What do I mean by this? The majority of us are taught that the American experiment is about expanding freedom. Yes, the experiment was started by flawed men and women who could not fully embody the ideals they espoused. It is assumed that all of us are like that: flawed individuals who are capable of talking about the best in humanity and striving to demonstrate their ideals. The resistance we face is the challenge of humanity: to live up to our moral ideals while also increasing the level of luxury and leisure in our lives.

It is not easy. It is also not impossible.

For Frederick Douglass to start life born into slavery, yet die as a famous freed man validates the experiment. Likewise, John Brown waking up inside the social position of being a “white man” in 1800 and evolving into the logical conclusion of the abolitionist movement at 59 is further validation.

From what I am learning: it is the sense that the experiment was working which makes my question controversial. To contemplate that the premise of the American experiment is flawed stops millions of minds in their tracks.

However, that is exactly what I am doing: calling into question the acceptance that the American experiment is even happening.

My question: Almost a year into this second Trump Administration, why haven’t John Browns emerged?

Photo by Augustus Washington, circa 1846–1847

At age 12, Mr. Brown saw the white man abuse the Black body of an enslaved child. Retaining a level of humanity, in spite of social programming, to view the slave master’s action as immoral, little Johnny resolved to not imitate such thought and behavior. For the next 44 years, his lived experience generated evidence which lead to the following four conclusions:

“They” - meaning slave masters, liberal abolitionists and those willing to morally compromise for political and economic stability - could not see Black people as fellow human beings.

They cannot be educated into experiencing Black people as humans.

They cannot be incentivized into seeing Black people as humans.

They cannot be scared into changing behavior.

They must be murdered for progress to occur. Otherwise, there will be no societal change, just creative reinforcement of the status quo.

After presenting this list, I guess a disclaimer is in order. In August 2019, I started my own healing journey at the 12th Beloved Music Festival. Inside the BIPoC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) Sanctuary, I learned it was possible to walk out of white supremacy culture and be your own self.

It took a moment for me to accept that the medicine I used is not universal to humanity. What works for me does not work for European Americans. Thanks to the work of psychologist, Resmaa Menakem, I am able to frame the trauma Black people metabolize as PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. For that to be successful, we have to remove ourselves from the source of the trauma. Hence, I (now) support two generations of separation between the “races” so that the concept of race can die and our collective humanity arises from its ashes.

In contrast, European Americans are fighting PITS, or perpetrator-induced trauma syndrome. Against the will of millions, oppressive acts are flowing off their hands in ways they can not (yet) see nor stop. The issue is the presence of Black bodies. As long as a racially acceptable victim is before them, the oppressive acts will occur.

Just like Minister Malcolm X taught, separation doesn’t mean segregation. I do not want “laws” forcing European American behaviors. What I am suggesting isn’t a refusal to engage in trading with white people or social gatherings. I advocate for the racial violence to stop and that requires Black and white people not being economically, or politically, dependent on multicultural cooperation.

Let me be clear, European Americans have to heal other European Americans. Black, Brown and Indigenous people have tried for almost 600 years to assist European Americans to abandon their attachment to hierarchy in order to feel safe. Our efforts are not working because we are not experienced by white nervous systems as humans. White people see white people as human. European Americans have to replace white supremacy culture with connection practices.

Because of how violent European Americans are - towards others and themselves - it seems to me that what Tyler Robinson did to Charlie Kirk would be commonplace by now. Why not?

In the face of this second Trump Administration’s naked practice of white Christian nationalism as public policy and the helplessness it generates in white bodies, why haven’t more John Browns come into being and started attacking ICE agents?

I look forward to hearing the answers. Please be civil in the comment section.