A jury rightfully convicted Karmelo Anthony for murder and sentenced him to 35 years in prison, but if there isn’t finally a complete rejection of the toxic “Black Lives Matter” movement, similar events are going to play out well into the future. There will be more violence and, if justice is served, more young black men in prison.
At the heart of the BLM ideology is the lazy, destructive assertion that “black and brown” people are oppressed by whites and therefore minorities, particularly blacks, are entitled to exhibit antisocial behavior with impunity, such as resisting arrest, stealing, or, as in the case of Anthony, bringing a knife to a high school track meet in the event he decides to murder someone under the guise of self defense.
The undisputed events of that case are as follows: In early 2025, Anthony, then 17, attended a Texas high school track meet, where he entered the tent of a school team that was not his own, apparently to shelter from rain. He was told to leave by at least one person, student Austin Metcalfe, also 17.
Anthony protested, and when Metcalfe advanced toward him, Anthony, with his hand in his bag, warned Metcalfe to back off. Metcalfe pushed Anthony, and that’s when Anthony plunged his knife into Metcalfe’s chest, striking his heart. Anthony then fled before being apprehended by police. At some point shortly thereafter, he admitted to the stabbing.
Anthony’s defenders have demonstrated their adherence to the Black Lives Matter ideology, either knowingly or not, by maintaining that Anthony was justified in responding to a shove at a grade-school athletic event by thrusting a concealed blade into the chest of a teen. They say it’s similar to the 2020 case of Kyle Rittenhouse, who while being chased on foot by a violent mob shot three people, killing two of them.
The comparison is laughable. Rittenhouse was on scene attempting to help citizens stop race rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and protect the private property of his associates. After a convict, for no discernible reason, chased Rittenhouse, ultimately cornering him in a car lot, Rittenhouse shot him and attempted to notify police. When the mob grew alert, it also gave chase, only for Rittenhouse to trip and fall to the ground, at which point he fired more shots at his aggressors.
Rittenhouse was prosecuted and a jury acquitted, because the overwhelming evidence was that he acted in self defense. In contrast, Anthony wasn’t defending himself. He was engaging in antisocial behavior— the deadly kind.
That justice was served makes it no less a tragedy for Anthony and his family. They and their defenders buy into a degenerate, corrosive ideology, as made clear by Anthony’s parents immediately after the trial suggesting the verdict was tainted by racism. (There were, in fact, non-whites on the jury.)
It’s a tragedy that in these BLM-fueled events, the public cannot count on juries to deliver the right verdict every time. If we could, Derek Chauvin, the officer convicted of murdering drug addict George Floyd, wouldn’t be in prison.
Had Metcalfe been murdered in 2020 or 2021, the outcome might have been very different. BLM is currently weak, but it’s not dead. No one is safe until it is.
