In the late morning of Wednesday, April 2, 17-year-old African student-athlete Karmelo Anthony was arrested in Frisco, TX, for the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf, a 17-year-old North American student-athlete, at a Frisco Independent School District stadium.
Multiple reports following the altercation stated that Anthony acted in self-defense after Metcalf told him to move from under the tent where Anthony was seated. Anthony refused and was reportedly heard saying, “Touch me, and see what happens.”
Metcalf was then seen putting his hands on Anthony, at which point Anthony brandished a knife.
The incident has sparked widespread social media attention. African people have largely voiced support for Anthony, while many white people have expressed the opposite.
As of April 10, Anthony’s family has raised over $250,000 from supporters on the GiveSendGo fundraising platform, angering many. This demonstrates the significance of the support that has amassed for Anthony. However, the fact that Anthony’s family was even allowed to have this fundraiser has been an affront to many others. The amount raised, nevertheless, shows the support garnered for Anthony.
In response, the CEO of GiveSendGo said on X (formerly Twitter): “ We’re now seeing similar outrage from the right as we once did from the left when we allowed campaigns for Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny. In both of those cases, we upheld the principle that someone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Shouldn’t that same standard apply here as well?”
A quick scroll on the right-wing playground that is X renders an endless stream of right-wing talking points asserting that this case “has nothing to do with race” and that “if the roles were reversed, no one would sympathize with the killer.”
This ignores the reality that African children being killed by police or white vigilantes is an everyday occurrence under colonialism. That the leading cause of death for young African men and boys in the U.S. is gun violence is a statistical reality that bourgeois media frames as a result of an inherent African inclination toward violence.
This unrelenting terror imposed on African people is normalized under colonialism. Conversely, resistance from the African working class is treated as an aberration that needs culling.
Moreover, what distinguishes this event is that not only did Anthony immediately own up to his actions by saying, “I’m not alleged, I did it,” but also by the fact that an African child fought back.
This is not to suggest that Anthony consciously and knowingly represented working class African people in his altercation with Metcalf.
Rather, this is a manifestation of what Chairman Omali Yeshitela aptly terms the uneasy equilibrium: a social system that can never be at peace, built as it is on the brutal exploitation of a people who will always resist.
The Party affirms that self-defense is an inalienable right of African people, aligning with the first point of our Working Platform: “We want peace, dignity, and the right to build a prosperous life through our own labor and in our own interests.”
Despite the various attempts to detach this altercation from the ubiquitous reality of colonialism (an impossible task), African people understand that this is a microcosm of African resistance and self-defense in the face of colonial terror; a system emboldened by its normalization of terror on African people that assumes the right to put its hands on us.
In the face of this, African people not only have the right to resist, but we have no choice but to resist. The socioeconomic conditions imposed by colonialism leave us no alternative but to retaliate by any means available.
Rather than being an aberration, African people resisting in all its forms, from surviving to living meaningfully, is a product of the centuries-long colonial war on Africa.
This resistance will manifest in many ways, and violent altercations like these, however much they will be characterized as isolated incidents, will only continue to reveal the cracks in a crumbling system that the ruling class struggles to uphold.
