Less than a week after the funeral of 17-year-old high school student Austin Metcalf was held in Frisco, Texas, it’s now clear how his killer, Karmelo Anthony, is going to defend himself in court. This will not be a trial where the outcome hinges on some disputed fact, or a damning piece of forensic evidence, or the use of some clever legal theory. Instead, in the eyes of Karmelo Anthony’s legal team, the result of this trial will depend on whether they can seat at least one juror who harbors a deep and abiding resentment towards white people. If they can accomplish that feat during jury selection, then they’re guaranteed a mistrial, and Karmelo Anthony can continue driving around in expensive SUVs and living in rented mansions until prosecutors give up.
That is their plan, as of right now. There is no longer any way to deny it. We are about to witness another trial in this country where — like the Chauvin trial, or the OJ trial — no one is even pretending that the facts actually matter. All that matters is race. In fact this isn’t even really comparable to an O.J. Simpson situation, where his supporters could hide behind the fact that he was famous, or that the police were corrupt because of what they did to Rodney King, or anything like that. The prosecution of Karmelo Anthony, in a very straightforward and undiluted way, will determine whether race trumps the rule of law in this country. It will test whether anti-white race hatred is so profound and so pervasive that a black student can stab an unarmed white teenager in the heart during a track meet, run away and ditch the murder weapon, wonder aloud whether his actions could possibly be considered self-defense, and then get away with it. In other words, generations after the civil rights movement, we are about to see whether white teenagers in places like Frisco, Texas actually have civil rights.
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