This Generation’s Racial Mirror
Every decade seems to give us a spectacular legal case that shows America’s racial reality. In the 1990s, it was the OJ Simpson case. When OJ was acquitted, whites around the country reacted with stunned horror while blacks celebrated. It might have been because they thought he was guilty that they celebrated. The more charitable explanation is that blacks simply wanted to believe the best about one of their own.
A YouGov poll taken in 2024, by which time most Americans thought Simpson had been guilty, found a plurality of blacks were “not sure,” though more blacks thought he was guilty than not. One doubts whether those who thought him guilty would have voted that way on a jury.
Credit Image: © Jonathan Alcorn via ZUMA Press Wire
In 2012, there was the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case. This case, along with the 2014 case of Michael Brown, coincided with what Matt Yglesias called “The Great Awokening.” Media mentions of racial injustice and police brutality surged, and social media turned formerly isolated cases into media frenzies.
Neither Martin nor Brown were formerly beloved national sports heroes or movie stars, just random black kids. However, then-President Barack Obama famously said that if he had a son, that son would look like Trayvon. It was in these cases that we saw the true birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, which would reach the heights of cultural influence in 2020 and remake America.
Something else happened during that time. What became the Alternative Right started to take shape during the Martin and Brown cases. Independent online researchers, avowedly right-wing online opinion sites, and social media users began discussing and deconstructing the media’s narratives about the cases.
George Zimmerman was not white. Travyon Martin was not an angelic child but a teenager who displayed typical behaviors of the black underclass. The prosecution’s key witness against George Zimmerman, Rachel Jeantel, was not a “smart cookie,” as Piers Morgan described her. Instead, Steve Sailer may have been right that her hostile, sullen turn on the stand was one of the few glimpses mainstream America gets of the low end of the bell curve. Most of American life is largely built around not dealing with such people, and here it was on every screen.
There were certainly race realists and white advocates who talked about the OJ Simpson trial in the 1990s. Pat Buchanan, in his historic 1992 “Culture War” speech, cited the Rodney King riots, which were shockingly violent by today’s standards. Yet such dissent either had to be channeled through the media or was relegated to the fringes. The mainstream media were not really challenged on the facts the same way they were during the Trayvon Martin trial, thanks to the internet.
Credit Image: © Ringo Chiu/ZUMAPRESS.com
The mainstream media’s inability to control the national debate arguably led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. His election, in turn, unquestionably led to the remarkably swift abandonment of free speech throughout the Western world and the drive for censorship by the government, tech companies, NGOs, and the media. In 2020, these elites retook control and drove out President Trump. In 2024, he returned in the greatest political comeback in American history.
Yet President Trump is just one man and does not have full control over his party, his government, or perhaps even his White House. However, his most serious opponent is the court system. The “rule of law” did not stop President Joe Biden from essentially abolishing immigration law. And now, various judges believe they have the right to determine the country’s immigration policy and even instruct foreign leaders to return people who should never have been in the United States. President Trump might not be in office at all if not for the lawfare campaign against him, which turned him into a martyr. At a time when nonpartisan institutions are shredding their credibility, the court system is on the brink of looking like just another collection of hacks.
This decade’s Race Trial might deal a finishing blow to the court system. The Austin Metcalf/Karmelo Anthony case is the racial case for this generation. Karmelo Anthony is a black student who was reportedly sitting in the wrong section during a track meet in Frisco, Texas. He was confronted by white student Austin Metcalf, who told him he was in the wrong section. Mr. Anthony responded by stabbing Metcalf in the heart. Metcalf died in his twin brother’s arms. There is no dispute about the killing itself; Mr. Anthony told police “I did it” when they approached him. However, he is claiming self-defense.
The case is ambiguous enough that each race will see what it wants. Metcalf reportedly touched or grabbed Mr. Anthony, who immediately pulled out his knife and struck. There is reportedly a video of the incident that has not been released. Separating truth from fiction in the case can be difficult because of phony social media posts. For example, soon after the killing, blacks on social media were circulating a “toxicology” report that said Austin Metcalf was high on several illegal drugs. Not only was this report made up, but no toxicology report could have been done and released so quickly.
Yet these lies reflect a greater truth. The mainstream media, whites generally, and Austin Metcalf’s father have spoken about this as a tragedy, a sad human drama born out of misunderstanding and a lack of empathy. Jeff Metcalf has done several interviews, sticking to the line that the case is not about race and stressing his sympathy for the killer and his family. One does not want to say cruel things about someone in the depths of grief. However, one cannot help but see this tone as bizarrely defensive, as if the white boy did something wrong by getting in the way of a black’s knife.
The Metcalf family has raised about $414,000 in a GoFundMe drive. Blacks topped that, quickly mobilizing to defend their own. One of several GoFundMe campaigns for the accused murderer Karmelo Anthony raised almost half a million dollars before being taken down. Several of the comments seem to suggest that blacks are donating to Mr. Anthony precisely because of what he did. Mockery of the white victim is also rampant on social media.
Karmelo Anthony’s family will reportedly use the money to move into a new house and hire security. To outraged whites, it looks like the alleged murderer’s family is cashing in on their son’s crime. Blacks, on the other hand, tend to think it is a family doing what is necessary to protect themselves. The New York Post reported that the Anthony family moved into a gated community and bought a new car. A black judge lowered his bond and allowed the alleged murderer to go free on house arrest. She then reportedly requested security herself because she is receiving threats.
On April 17, the Anthony family held a press conference with the activist organization Next Generation Action Network, a group that supports Black Lives Matter, mass immigration, and other leftist causes. The press conference began with an attack on the victim’s father, who attended, refused to leave when asked, and was then escorted out by police. This, said lawyer Dominque Alexander, was “a disrespect to the dignity of his son.” The organization also put out a social video that some compared to a celebrity promotional clip. The Anthony family and friends are also reportedly hawking T-shirts.
Karmelo Anthony’s lawyer says that this case reminds us all of the “black struggle in America.”
Perhaps he is right. The fact is we are all in an impossible struggle because blacks are here. They should not be. After four centuries, they have never meaningfully assimilated into an American identity. They never can or will, because Americans are white.
There is no “we.” There never was. There has not been and will never be a multiracial “American people.” Nor will there ever be a shared understanding of justice, morality, or the will of God. There are only what politicians disingenuously call “our communities” — tribes of different peoples with fundamentally different interests locked in a zero-sum game.
Thomas Jefferson famously said of blacks: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.” America insists on pretending those lines are not there. Our children are the casualties. This case will remind us of these hard truths and hopefully wake up others. Yet if nothing changes, there will simply be another case in a few years.
It is about race. It will always be about race. The solution to the racial problem is separation. The rest is noise.