**See, see, SEE! **
*I told Y’all. *
Back in June I was right about Austin Metcalf when I wrote this essay "Dear Jeff Metcalf: Your Son Is Dead Because You Failed to Teach Him That Black Boys Have Boundaries."
The right-wing propaganda machine came for me and dragged the hell out of me for writing that essay. They called me racist and insensitive to his grieving parents for doing what the media ecosystem repeatedly does to Black families and communities when our young are snatched from the future. And their digital lynch mob left all kind of vile emails, voice mail messages, and handwritten letters, and they even tried their best to get me fired.
Their hopes of destroying my livelihood and career did not survive the summer. So here I go again.
Flash forward to yesterday.
During a court hearing on Karmelo Anthony’s motion for a new trial, information came out about Metcalf’s background. This was damning character-evidence was deliberately kept from the jury as part of a “gentleman’s agreement.” And yes, we also heard disturbing information about Karmelo Anthony stalking an ex-girlfriend and sending violent text messages. So both of these boys have some ugly mess in their past.
But not only was I right about Metcalf, Black America’s intuition was right too for refusing to participate in the right-wing canonization of a dead racist bully who put hands on the wrong Black kid defending himself.
I always say that Black folk are pattern-seeking people. And so when news of that fatal track meet encounter between Metcalf and Karmelo Anthony first hit the headlines, we started reading that incident through our historical and cultural experience. We rightly clocked how, once again, white innocence was being manufactured right in our faces. We watched how the right-wing turned Metcalf into a good kid, a beloved son, a promising athlete, a victim, and a racial symbol of white grievance. And predictably, Karmelo Anthony was the dangerous Black thug and all the things white America has been taught to fear.
We knew the story about Metcalf didn’t sit right with us and we recognized the racial script before all the hidden facts could catch up with our instincts. But now, we’ve got official information that was sitting right behind all that manufactured innocence. Fifty-three documented incidents involving Austin and his twin brother were listed in Anthony’s new-trial motion.
Now, we are not talking about just one adolescent fuckup, Y’all. We’re talking about fifty-three incidents that provide a disturbing picture of Metcalf’s behavioral and disciplinary problems that the jury never heard about in the first trial! The condensed list includes:
Racist graffiti (“KKK” and “Kill all Black people”)
Antisemitic graffiti (“Heil Hitler”)
Use of racial slurs (Frequently used the n-word at school and in communications with friends)
Bullying Black male students
Fighting and physical altercations (Knocked a girl to the ground and punched her in the stomach)
School disciplinary incidents (Received multiple in-school suspensions and called a teacher a “bitch.”)
Received a suspension after he and another students discussed bringing a gun to school
Juvenile-court involvement (The twins received 12 months’ probation for the graffiti incident)
Probation connected to vandalism/graffiti
Was ejected from a football game and banned from attending basketball games for a season for verbal harassment
A broader history of behavioral and disciplinary problems that the jury never heard about
At a prior track meet when Metcalf was told that another student was sitting behind their bench, he reportedly responded, “kill that mf.”
Back in June on the heels of Karmelo Anthony’s conviction and after hearing Metcalf’s father speaking at the sentencing and watching that interview where he called the Black teen a “watermelon felon,” I wrote that essay which pissed off the right-wing grievance goblins. I argued then that Metcalf’s words raised questions about how he raised his boys.
Did Jeff Metcalf fail to teach Austin that Black boys have boundaries? Did he fail to teach his son that he is not entitled to degrade, bully, remove, or put hands on Black people because you believe they are subordinate. I was repeatedly accused of saying that Metcalf deserved to die. That’s not what I argued. At all. I argued that Jeff Metcalf failed his son and sent him into the world dangerously unprepared for the moment when a Black person, like Karmelo Anthony, has a normal human response and refuses to submit to him.
So now, I feel vindicated because the behavior I was theorizing about back in June was not confined to that fatal track meet encounter. Metcalf shoving Karmelo belongs to a much longer and larger learned pattern of racial entitlement and violence. That first jury rejected Anthony’s self-defense claim, but the Metcalf’s chronic habit of crossing other people’s physical boundaries should have been part of the evidentiary record.
The lesson here is that this latest episode should effectively demonstrate for journalists, scholars and anybody with functioning critical faculties should resist instant racial casting and mythology after a tragedy. And after months of grievance goblins sending me hate messages and telling me I should lose my job because I refused to their racial fantasies, I have exactly one thing left to say: I told y’all.
So, I’ll be curious to see how Karmelo Anthony’s legal team will use this new information if a new trial is granted. They can’t just get up there and say, “Austin Metcalf was racist and his killing was legally justified.”
No.
They need to ask a legal question: What did Karmelo Anthony know before April 2, 2025, and what did he reasonably perceive at the moment he was shoved? Did he know that Metcalf was a bully? Was he aware of his reputation for fighting? His legal team needs to show whether that knowledge affected the reasonableness of his fear. Based on what I’ve read, Texas courts recognize that prior conduct can be relevant to self-defense, specifically in cases involving self-defense.
But then again, at the end of the day this is Texas. And this is racist America. Karmelo Anthony’s new defense team can make a brilliant evidentiary and self-defense argument and it still won’t matter. Previous cases, like the killing of Trayvon Martin, have already shown us that a Black boy’s fear does not deserve to be treated as reasonable in the first place and neither does a white person’s aggression against Black people.
Now that the facts are in the room, we shall see whether Texas can entertain these possibilities and whether justice will arrive.
But for now, I just want to say one thing to all the grievance goblins who came for me back in June: I told you so!
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THIS CONTENT IS WRITTEN IN THE AUTHOR’S PERSONAL CAPACITY. ANY OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THE AUTHOR’S OWN AND SHOULD NOT BE ATTRIBUTED TO HOWARD UNIVERSITY OR MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY.
