Race Doesn't Matter. Until It Does.

Until Americans are willing to challenge their own assumptions about race in their country, however, we’re just going to have to settle for this.

Austin Metcalf (L), 17, was murdered by Karmelo Anthony (R), also 17.

Sorry, family, but we need to have “The Talk.” I know immigration and tariffs seem like a much bigger problem right now, but there’s a greater problem which transcends both of them.

About immigration: it’s a problem in America, no doubt. A big problem. But it’s also of a vastly different character from that of Europe. Across the Atlantic, the problem isn’t just increasing violence. It’s also a wholesale upending of the social order. In America, it’s a matter of anarchy. Our country is becoming a literal free-for-all, made emblematic by open borders and unchecked criminality, with politicians and other public figures now openly calling for anything to go.

However, America’s problem with anarchy didn’t begin with immigration. It certainly won’t end after immigration is brought back under control. In fact, there’s one native population that has consistently been at the center of all of America’s social ills for nearly its entire existence.

What’s that problem? For one, there’s this:

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In case you’re wondering, yes, that’s a mob of young Blacks causing daytime havoc at this shopping mall, a phenomenon you see throughout the country. Our public spaces are starting to become unpredictable, places where, for the most part nothing bad happens, then suddenly, one day, it does, and you can’t get away from it.

Then there’s the case out of Frisco, Texas, an incident which has caused tremendous controversy on social media. On April 2, 17-year-old Austin Metcalf of Frisco, Texas, was stabbed after an encounter at a track meet with his would-be killer, 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony, went awry. It’s an utterly senseless killing in its own right, with the fact that Metcalf is White and Anthony being Black playing a major role in the controversy.

What exactly went down? This report from WFAA Houston is the most complete accounting of the incident I’ve read yet:

One witness reportedly told police that the victim, Austin Metcalf, had told the suspect, Karmelo Anthony, he would need to move out from under his team's tent, the affidavit stated. Anthony is a student at Centennial High School, but was reportedly sitting under Memorial High School's tent.

Upon telling him this, the witness told police that Anthony opened his bag and reached inside.

“Touch me and see what happens,” Anthony told Metcalf, according to a witness.

Metcalf reportedly then touched Anthony, the witness told a responding officer, and Anthony told Metcalf to punch him and see what would happen.

Soon afterward, the witness said, Metcalf reportedly grabbed Anthony to tell him to move. At which point, the affidavit continues, Anthony reportedly pulled out what the witness recalled as a black knife and stabbed Metcalf once in the chest before running away.

Metcalf reportedly started grabbing his chest and telling people to get help, the witness told police.

Details are still forthcoming. As more facts become known, I’ll probably revisit the case, this time from a prepping standpoint, analyze it and see what we can learn from it to lead safer lives. However, based on what information is available, my gut tells me this case isn’t going to turn out to be too complicated. In fact, it immediately reminded me of an incident which occurred in 2023, one I covered at great length on this blog.

Here’s a quick summary of that incident:

The victim, Marc Cohen, 63, had purchased VIP tickets with assigned seating for a film at the theater located at 2315 N. Federal Highway. When Cohen and his wife arrived, they found an unknown couple occupying their seats.

After politely requesting [Jesse Montez] Thorton to vacate their assigned seats, a verbal altercation escalated into a physical confrontation, captured on video.

In the video footage, Thorton is seen repeatedly punching Cohen in the face until witnesses intervened, pulling Thorton away. Cohen required hospitalization after he suffered head and facial injuries.

The victim was White. The assailant was Black. Being asked to get up out of a seat that someone else had claim to was enough to trigger a savage beating out of the assailant.

When remarking on the case months later, I stated:

There’s also the race angle. Jesse Montez Thorton II is Black. The victim, Marc Cohen, is White. Don’t think for a moment this wouldn’t have been the biggest part of the story had Cohen been armed and shot Thorton in self-defense. Because Thorton wasn’t shot, however, and because Cohen was through-and-through the victim, there’s no way for this case to be racialized, even though I think a case could be made that Thorton saw Cohen as an easy victim because he was older and White.

But we don’t live in a world where we’re all seen as equally capable of being racist and acting on our prejudices, nor do we live in a world where we are all equally regarded as likely to be a victim of someone else’s prejudices. Our society would suffer a collapse of sorts otherwise, because so much of how we live, work, and relate with one another is underpinned by this worldview, no matter how detached from reality it might be.

More important, a hypothetical shooting of Thorton, even if entirely justified, would still be regarded as a moral outrage. The assault on Cohen? Not nearly as much. Crime is like the weather; it just is and it can sometimes be bad. Crying over it is like crying over spilled milk.

Then there’s this incident. Long-time readers have likely seen it before:

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It really doesn’t take much to set these people off, does it? The common thread in all these incidents: the perception of “disrespect.” Someone told them to do something and they didn’t like it. Sure, nobody likes being told by a stranger what to do. But most of us handle these disputes without violence. Only in the Black community is responding with violence, often deadly violence, a reflexive response. Hundreds of Black people are killed by other Blacks annually for no reason other than hurt feelings.

On that point, a tidal wave of otherwise well-meaning voices, many of them Black, stepped forward to downplay any racial component to this case. I have yet to see any evidence racial animus played a role in this murder, but the problem is, ruling out a racial component doesn’t help at all in this case and it doesn’t lower the tensions inherent in the incident. America isn’t a color-blind society, and while constantly talking about race doesn’t make things better, the racial narrative in this country is terribly out of balance.

Remember: most Blacks, along with a significant percentage of the population of all races, are convinced systemic racism still not only exists in this country, but that Blacks are constantly under threat of attack from the Ku Klux Klan, beaten by mobs of Whites “hunting” them. None of this is true, of course, but the fact is, the narrative prevails. If one side isn’t interested in racializing everything, the other side absolutely is. The side that’s interested in doing so will always win.

What are we to do about this? Are we supposed to just sit back and accept this? Can we expect absolutely nothing out of the Black community? Must we really allow them to just live by a separate set of rules, lest they punish us for daring to correct them?

A Restless Demographic

I speak critically of the Black community here. I’m not going to pretend I do otherwise. No, Blacks don’t have a monopoly on crime and violence in America. We’re a land full of angry, irresponsible, neurotic, stressed out, deeply unwell people. However, no other group commits crime and practices violence so customarily more than the Black community. That’s just a fact. You don’t see mobs of White, Asian, or Hispanic “youths” rioting in malls across the country. I don’t even need to bring up Black crime statistics. Nobody, including many Blacks, wants to live in Black neighborhoods. They may deny it has anything to do with race, and they may be perfectly honest in saying so. But to deny any link between race and the sort of living environment they breed is intellectually dishonest.

It’s not that I feel like I’m preaching to choir. It’s because it’s not some big mystery as to the state of the Black community. The problem, as I’ve repeatedly explained, is that we’ve been successfully indoctrinated into not noticing glaring patterns, or remaining silent about them if we do. We are forced to deny a tremendous amount of reality in what’s increasingly becoming a desperate attempt at keeping the peace in America. When we are allowed to talk about it, we have to talk about in a certain way, with Blacks as an oppressed population, suffering perpetually from the legacy of slavery and institutionalized discrimination, despite the fact no other group, for the last half-century, has received more assistance and benefits as a member of this society. In fact, it’s worked so well, other racial groups have attempted to emulate their playbook, with less success.

X account “Dr. Ricardo Duchesne” speaks much truth here:

American culture is dedicated to making integration with blacks work. Accordingly, everyday life, education, sports, and music have been heavily Africanized; and football is a key component of this.

But the more American culture is Africanized, the more whites are killed and assaulted by blacks.

Can the American liberal order break away from this dilemma? Rejecting wokeness will not change this. There is no exit door out of integration within a liberal order.

It would require a complete rejection of the foundational ideals of the United States.

I don’t agree entirely on the second half of that tweet. But he’s absolutely correct that, for over half a century, almost everything we do in America is aimed at trying to manage the relationship between the races, making integration work. It’s succeeded in the sense that we’re not a strictly racially-divided society and, for the most part, we all get along and prosper. Yet Blacks continue to be the one group not only lagging behind all others, they’re also the group at the greatest odds with others. At some point, we need to re-assess our assumptions about race relations in America. It’s the true conversation that’s long overdue.

Separation Is The Peaceful Option

Slavery ended 160 years ago in America. The Civil Rights era was over a half-century ago. Neither is very long in historical terms, but the idea America today in any way remotely resembles what we once were is wishful thinking. Yes, it’s wishful, because there are millions of Americans of all races who harbor a sadomasochistic desire for this country to continue to be ridden with slavery and White supremacy. It gives their empty lives a sense of purpose, something worth fighting for. Decades of indoctrination have convinced millions of Americans that the fight against slavery and White supremacy isn’t only the most noble fight one can wage, but that the fight is literally never-ending, even when demand for either has completely outstripped the supply.

If the country cannot move past slavery and its racial history after all this time, after all this “progress,” and after all the accommodations to make Blacks and other racial minorities feel more belonged in this country, we never will. In fact, it’s more than overdue for America to start reassessing both its understanding of race, the history of race and slavery in this country, along with the legacy of the Civil Rights era. If all of our efforts have led to greater racial animosity, if Blacks have become even more of a menace to society, if non-Whites still feel as though they don’t belong in this country, then there’s no other way to describe any of this as anything other than an abject failure. There’s a point of diminishing returns for everything; you can’t keep asking Whites to capitulate when they’ve become dispossessed of everything except for what they own. Are they going to be stripped of their property and wealth as well? I know there are millions of all races who want to see this happen.

It’s for this reason integration has failed. Yes, it’s a failure, and the murder of Austin Metcalf is emblematic of that failure. The whole idea behind integration was to take all of America’s different races and create a new race, if only in a figurative sense. In the end, Blacks remain the most racially conscious of all, have only balkanized themselves even more, and are no more invested in the American experiment than they were before. As I stated earlier, Blacks are in some form of conflict with all other racial groups, though they reserve their greatest animus for Whites.

What’s the solution? It’s not greater diversity equity, and inclusion, or multiculturalism, that’s for sure. America has been stripped of just about all the building blocks of nationhood. We cannot have anything resembling even a remotely orderly society with the legacy of slavery and race constantly hanging over our heads. It makes it impossible to address very glaring issues for which it is past time to correct. A few months ago, I had a conversation with a Black American man who said much the same: the legacy of slavery makes it impossible for us to make highly necessary corrections to our society.

This isn’t entirely true, of course. If we’re going to live in a society, together, then we need to put that all aside in the interest of the greater good. That’s what it means to be a society, a nation, a civilization - we set aside our differences so we can survive together as a group. Constantly indulging in grievances, rewarding people for it, none of it’s conducive to cohesion and order in society. A certain burying of the hatchet needs to occur, otherwise, what’s the point?

Blacks and liberals might say slavery and Jim Crow weren’t that long ago, but events like the Bosnian War, where the worst case of ethnic cleansing in the West post-World War II occurred, were even more recent. Yet if you go to Bosnia today, you see a country in peace, despite tension in the air. How have they managed this? It wasn’t because they forced the different ethnics to live together.

Historically, societies with an aggrieved native population compensated through things like autonomous territories - nations within nations, effectively - giving these groups a slice of their own land to live how they want, the way they want, while allowing them the benefit of being part of a greater whole. It’s an idea which makes perfect sense, too. After two destructive wars in the 1990s, the reason why Chechens live in peace as part of Russia is because they not only have their own nation state-within-a-state, but because they’ve been granted an extensive amount of autonomy.

But we know Blacks would outright reject such a proposal on the basis of “segregation.” Never mind the fact Blacks, specifically, live in a de facto form of segregation; most Americans in general live among others of the same race, but Blacks especially. Some of this is because of Black self-preference, a lot of it because nobody wants to live in Black neighborhoods due to living conditions. Whatever the case may be, Blacks live largely separate lives from other races, until they show up in spaces we all share or are predominated by other races. And we must share, or else.

Not only that, there’s no guarantee an autonomous Black ethnostate would turn out anywhere nearly as well as Bosnia or even Chechnya. Though I was recently critical towards him, Richard Hanania makes a great point here [bold mine]:

Lee Kuan Yew famously said that in a multiracial democracy, people vote for their ethnic or religious group. This is indeed a general trend, but when leaders lean too much into identity, we understand that this poisons discourse and thought, which is why we call them demagogues. In the US, ethnopolitics is more acceptable for blacks than any other group, and blacks tend to elect extremely corrupt politicians. As of late 2009, all active ethics probes in the House of Representatives were into the behavior of black members, which led to charges of racism. Since 2019 alone, the black mayors of New York City, Baltimore, and Jackson have been indicted for corruption related charges.

Coupled with the general dysfunction within the Black community, a Black autonomous region would likely turn into our own Gaza Strip, to quote a reader commenting on a past column. It could very well turn out to be a place of armed conflict, where the state needs to use military force to maintain order and contain the violence so it doesn’t spillover. Apartheid, effectively.

I’m not about apartheid. But I’ve long since turned against forced integration, also. I’m not a big believer in the much-vaunted “middle ground,” but goodness, there’s got to be a solution found somewhere between apartheid and forcibly mixing the population that we can all agree to, no? Surely, if we accept that Blacks have grievances, legitimate or not, we can find a living arrangement that allows them to live removed from the influence of Whites, away from a system they find unjust, in accordance with their lifestyles and preferences, no?

But this assumes that Blacks are interested in working towards that solution. To be honest, I’m not sure what the community wants any longer. On one hand, they want to live free of the influence of Whites and opt out of an unjust system. On the other, they insist on being members of the same society as the rest of us, having access to all the same privileges and spaces as the rest of us, while operating by an entirely different set of rules. One of these arrangements is tenable, the other isn’t. Yet it’s the one which isn’t that we’re being forced to live under.

The Dream Is Dead

One of the best commentaries on the murder of Austin Metcalf came from X account “Thales of Florida.” The gist of it is this: everyone and their mother knows the Black community is a problem in this country. Literally daggum everyone. Yet nobody knows what to do about it. Or do they, and they just don’t want to say it? Whatever the case may be, everyone knows so much of America’s problems revolve around a single demographic.

Here are a few highlights from the thread:

8/ How much of American politics boils down to Leftists and Rightists arguing past each other about how to pretend to solve the problems of the black community?

The ideological rift in this country, which is still fronted mostly by Whites, is predominantly defined by this one issue, more than even immigration. In fact, American history is one of White people arguing with each other about what to do with Blacks.

I thought this one was the best:

18/ Latte liberals know just as much as redneck conservatives. Blacks know as much as whites. Women know as much as men. That’s what makes this shared delusion irritating. There's a wall of pretense between people - a wall of bullshit. And folks ruin each other over the bullshit.

The delusion is, of course, the belief that there’s actually nothing wrong with the Black community, at least nothing which doesn’t exist in other communities, while at the same time society owes something to Blacks. That if we just open our arms and our hearts to them, they’ll become part of this bigger American family, living together in peace, working towards a grand destiny. Sure, many Blacks are perfectly wonderful people who belong to the family. But as a group? They’re as destructive as ever. That hasn’t changed.

Race has to be part of the discussion. Nobody wants to hear it; we celebrate MLK Day because we still hold onto the increasingly foolish hope that we can one day see each other as humans and only humans, not as Blacks, Browns, Whites, or whomever. Over 60 years after MLK’s “I Have A Dream Speech,” it’s safe to say it was entirely aspirational and not rooted in reality. The fact we even came this far is a miracle and probably the best we can hope for. If it can’t get better, it’s because one group benefits from things not getting any better. For America to truly get past race, everyone, not just Whites, have to get past it. Holding onto grievances, living in the past, none of that works. Do you know how many wars have been fought over unfinished history?

Has Something Changed?

I don’t know why the murder of Austin Metcalf has triggered such an outrage, this time against Blacks in America. It’s a savage, senseless killing, no doubt, but it’s not the only one. It’s far from the first and likely won’t be the last. Why has this one sparked so much of a reaction over all the others?

I guess we just never know which incident is going to be the proverbial straw which breaks the camel’s back. There’s definitely a shift here in “vibes” here, the only question being: will anything substantively change following this? I’m skeptical anything will. The counter-backlash from Blacks has been equally ferocious, probably more so. As the most race-conscious group in America, as the one people checking off all the boxes defining a “nation” in this country, Blacks, even those aligned on the Right, have closed ranks, many of them in outright defense of Karmelo Anthony.

I won’t post the commentary here, as a lot of it is just nonsense, but some of it makes it sound like what you’d say about the enemy in a time of war. Someone once accurately characterized Black American politics as inherently far-right in nature; I don’t think most Americans truly understand the sizzling hatred they hold towards Whites and other groups. It’s in this context which they hold cultural superiority in this country and still largely control the narrative. There are also still millions of Americans of all races sympathetic to the Black experience, so I doubt this will be the case that flips it all on its head.

What’s for sure is that we’re not done talking about Metcalf’s murder. At least, I’m not. We’ll need to see just how far this story’s legs can carry it. We all have our feelings about this case, but the important thing is to stick to the facts as much as possible. There’s a lot of what self-defense attorney Andrew Branca refers to as “aspirational information,” information which is likely not true about the case, but is being peddled as the truth, often on social media, with a specific agenda in mind.

For example, an X account claims to have spoken to a coach with knowledge about what may have sparked the violent confrontation. I don’t know why a coach would speak with someone whose only claim to fame is as a Spaces host in X, but assuming their account is true, then that makes this coach a material witness and the police should be speaking with them.

None of this changes the reality of violence in the Black community and the hostility they have towards America which simply won’t abate. Most countries of the world have a section of the population which is problematic to some degree; for the U.S., it’s the Black population. It’s unfortunate and there are many Blacks out there who wish only to live peacefully among the general population. But in a multiracial society, we’re all judged as groups, not as individuals. Them be the rules.

Until Americans are willing to challenge their own assumptions about race in their country, however, we’re just going to have to settle for this:

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If this is how they treat each other, why would things be any better with any other race?

This tweet sums up the unspoken American experience all too well:

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One last thing. To anyone who thinks race had nothing to do with this incident, know this: there’s a strong chance the defense for Karmelo Anthony will invoke race. Once they do, this case is racial, whether anyone wants it to be or not. Shouting that it has nothing to do with it is like shouting into the void. Nobody will hear you.

Let’s discuss. Have you been following the Austin Metcalf murder case? What are your thoughts? Do you have an opinion on what happened, who’s guilty or not, or is it still too early? What’s the actual state of race relations in America? Is there a solution to any of this?

Let’s discuss in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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