Karmelo Anthony’s Imaginary Oppression

James Talarico, the Democrat candidate from Texas running for the U.S. Senate, recently weighed in on the conviction of Karmelo Anthony for the April 2025 murder of Austin Metcalf.

“Right now, we’ve got a system that doesn’t serve all Americans equally, and, and we know that black Texans have been, um, have not gotten the justice they deserve,” he said.

This is a perfect illustration of the Sixth Woke Commandment in my book “The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)”—“You Shall Be Woke to Imaginary Oppression.”

Anthony was convicted by a jury drawn from the area he lived in. He told police, “I was protecting myself,” but those jurors apparently did not believe he was reasonably in fear of his life so as to justify fatally plunging a knife into another boy’s heart.

Activists and race-hustlers in Texas and nationally claimed that Anthony was unfairly convicted, mostly because there were no African American jurors. The ugly implication is that black jurors would ignore the facts and decide guilt or innocence based on race alone. I hope not.

The U.S. made tremendous progress on equality in the 1950s and 60s, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which explicitly banned discrimination on the basis of race. The next few decades saw steady improvement in equal treatment before the law.

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Yet for profiteers and organizations that lived off race grievance, admitting any progress would kill the golden goose. Our left-wing educational establishment continues to teach that America remains “structurally” racist, even if it can’t provide evidence. So, despite the change in facts, public perception has diverged from reality.

When Michael Brown was shot by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, a report by the Department of Justice “did not reveal any eyewitness who stated that Brown said ‘don’t shoot’ or that he had his hands in the air.” After robbing a liquor store, Brown approached the officer in his car and tried to take his gun. The officer shot him and the shooting was considered lawful. But many in the American public continue to believe that Brown was a martyr to police violence.

Harvard professor Roland Fryer’s research showed that police do not kill black people at a rate disproportionate to either their population or rate of committing crimes.

Thanks to an academia and media locked into the race-oppression narrative, the truth Fryer revealed has not penetrated the national consciousness. Anthony is the latest in a series of criminals, the most famous of whom being George Floyd, lionized by the race industry.

Last week, a judge denied Anthony’s request for a new trial. The law allows this in rare circumstances, but the bar is high. You don’t get to keep having new trials until you win.

Anthony did not testify at his own trial, which seemed odd. Now, thanks to the hearings over his possible new trial, we know why: His lawyer feared that cross-examination would bring out Anthony’s past, which includes criminal acts and threats of violence.

To prevent all that coming out in trial, his defense lawyer reached a “gentleman’s agreement” with prosecutors to keep both boys’ past actions out of the courtroom. Prosecutors agreed to the deal partly because Metcalf himself had a history of violence, vandalism, and racially charged comments that, while irrelevant to his murder, could have negatively influenced a jury.

Fearing the racial implications of the trial, the judges for both Anthony’s murder trial and his appeal for a new hearing did not allow cameras in the courtroom. Maybe they should have, because no matter what anyone does, cases like these become instantly tribalized in our era.

Both boys appear to have had anger issues as well as previous incidents of violence. They both had said or written things that were racist. But all that’s immaterial. What matters is what happened that day: the act, and the state of mind of the actor. Witnesses reported that Metcalf did not assault Anthony so as to put him in reasonable fear for his life. Anthony stabbed Metcalf, causing his death.

Anthony’s parents reportedly raised $633,908 for legal fees and other expenses. The New York Post reported that the family had moved to a $900,000 home and had bought a new car. Yet when Anthony appealed his conviction, he had a court-appointed lawyer. This would have required him telling the Texas Indigent Defense Commission he had no money.

Anthony upgraded to a team of lawyers including Gary Bledsoe, the president of the Texas NAACP, and a lawyer from Ben Crump Law. Crump is either “the country’s most influential civil rights lawyer,” or the nation’s most famous ambulance-chaser, depending on who you ask.

Every accused person is entitled to a lawyer—the best they can afford. But crime is crime. The races of the perpetrator and the victim should be irrelevant to prosecution and punishment. There is a reason lady Justice is always depicted as blind. Tribal solidarity cannot be allowed to take primacy over facts and law in our increasingly diverse society.

Once upon a time, in parts of the U.S., it was very unlikely that a white jury would convict a white perpetrator of violence against a black victim. That was utterly wrong. We have progressed so far that to go back in the other direction, where no black person would jail another for killing a white or Asian victim, would be equally bad. That’s not progress, and it’s not justice.