The Karmelo Anthony Problem
A.J. Christopher
10–12 minutes
On April 2, 2025, Karmelo Anthony went to Memorial High School looking for a fight. Though he was participating in a track meet, he felt the need to bring a knife in his backpack. Once at the school, he sat in the tent of the opposing team. When confronted by Austin Metcalf, who told him to leave, Anthony reached into his backpack and said, “Touch me and see what happens.” Metcalf then grabbed Anthony in an attempt to forcibly move him out of the tent. Anthony then used his knife to stab Metcalf in the heart, killing him almost instantly.
Touch me and see what happens. This is the ethos for which Anthony was willing to murder an innocent boy.
On paper, Anthony sounded as if he were a model citizen with a bright future. Coming from a stable, two-parent household, he was the captain of his own school’s track and football teams. He worked two part-time jobs and was a straight A student. At the time of his crime, he was a month away from graduation, and was planning on going to college. Until the moment he plunged his knife into Metcalf’s chest, he had never had any incidents with law enforcement.
What are we to make of this? How are we supposed to understand how someone as seemingly normal as Karmelo Anthony was willing, in a manner of seconds, to destroy the lives of others, not to mention his own life, over such a petty argument?
Touch me and see what happens. Anthony didn’t develop this ethos on his own. There is a sickness in black subculture in contemporary America, and the sickness is this: Too many young black males are immersed in a socio-racial ideology that glorifies violence, preaches that only the meanest dog on the block wins, and dictates that any perceived threat from anyone who “steps up to me” must be countered with a wildly disproportionate, overwhelming response.
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https://pjmedia.com/aj-christopher/2026/06/13/the-karmelo-anthony-problem-n4953923