by J. Pharoah Doss
In 2025, Karmelo Anthony, a 17-year-old Black high school student, stabbed and killed Austin Metcalf, a White 17-year-old high school student, at a track meet in Texas.
According to witnesses, Anthony entered another school’s team tent during a rain delay. Team tents are restricted areas reserved for athletes from that school. Anthony was asked to leave multiple times. He refused. Metcalf confronted Anthony. Anthony reached into his backpack and told Metcalf, “Touch me and see what happens.” Metcalf shoved Anthony. Then Anthony pulled a knife and stabbed Metcalf.
Anthony pleaded not guilty, insisting he was only protecting himself. The problem was Anthony did not meet the core legal requirements under Texas law to successfully argue self-defense.
Anthony was convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years.
When Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) was asked about the verdict, she said, “Black women who have Black male children live in fear and agony every single day, a fear and agony that, I promise you, the Metcalfs probably never spend a day living that way.” Angela Wilson, a contributor to The Root, expounded on Crocket’s sentiment in an opinion piece called “After the Karmelo Anthony verdict, Black parents are having conversations they never wanted to have.” Wilson began, “The conversation every Black parent dreads is happening right now in living rooms across America, ignited by a single word echoed in a Texas courtroom: guilty.”
Wilson detailed the conversation popular TikTok influencer Just Wayne had with his son after the verdict. Wayne repeated what his father told him about attending school with White kids. Being Black, Wayne’s father warned, meant he could not afford to make the same mistakes or expect the same leniency as his White peers.
Then Wilson compared Karmelo Anthony to Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse, a White 17-year-old, shot three people after multiple individuals attacked him in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a riot following a police shooting. Rittenhouse was charged with murder, he claimed self-defense, and he was found not guilty. Wilson made that comparison to point out a double standard between Blacks and Whites in the criminal justice system.
Wilson said, “A 12-person jury in Kenosha—consisting of 11 White individuals and one person of color—acquitted [Rittenhouse] of all charges in 2021. In Anthony’s case, an all-White jury rejected his claims of self-defense during a confrontation with Metcalf at a high school track meet last April, finding him guilty of murder in only two-and-a-half hours. This swift conviction stands in stark contrast to Rittenhouse’s verdict, who also used a self-defense argument but walked away scot-free. Now, Black parents are once again faced with an agonizing responsibility to teach their children how to navigate a world that often grants them less room for error while offering others the benefit of the doubt.”
The comparison only makes sense if both failed to meet the legal requirements for self-defense, and Rittenhouse was found not guilty of murder because he is White, while Anthony was convicted of murder because he is Black. However, the defendant’s race was not responsible for the different outcomes; rather, it was caused by the fact that Rittenhouse satisfied the legal requirements for self-defense while Anthony did not.
Congresswoman Crockett incorrectly implied that Black women “live in fear and agony” over their sons getting convicted by a racist court system. In actuality, Black women, particularly those living in inner cities, have greater reason to fear that their sons would become murder victims, as was the case with Austin Metcalf.
According to the most recent comprehensive data compiled by theglobalstatistics.com, the Black homicide rate is 6 times higher than the White rate, with a figure of 20.6 per 100,000; the Black offending rate is 7 times higher than the White rate, at 26.5 per 100,000; and 94 percent of Black victims are killed by Black offenders. The highest-risk demographic is Black men between the ages of 18 and 24.
However, the most agonizing experience for Black women is being the mother of a murdered son whose homicide has yet to be solved.
In March, themurderchannel.com published Larry Katz’s article called “The Clearance Rate Crisis: Why Half of All Murders Go Unsolved.” Katz said, “A homicide is ‘cleared’ when law enforcement makes an arrest and charges a suspect or when the case is closed due to exceptional circumstances, e.g., the suspect dies before arrest.” However, “The national homicide clearance rate—the percentage of cases that get solved—has been declining for decades.” In the 1960s, over 90 percent of homicides were cleared. Today, the national average hovers around 50 percent. That means roughly half of all murders in the United States go unsolved.”
Katz continued, “Here is the most uncomfortable fact in homicide clearance research: cases involving Black victims are cleared at significantly lower rates than cases involving White victims. Multiple analyses have found that cities across the US clear homicides involving White victims at roughly twice the rate as those involving Black victims.”
When asked about her son’s murder not being solved, one Black mother said, “I feel so frustrated because I can’t get anyone to come forward and give me any information to figure out what exactly transpired. I guess I’m just looking for some closure.”
Crockett was inadvertently correct when she said that the parents of Austin Metcalf “will never spend a day living that way”; that’s because they have closure.
Their son’s murder was cleared, and the killer was convicted.
