There are two viral stories that I wish I could ignore. But I can’t – not because they’re particularly shocking, but because the reaction to them has been anything but shocking.
In New York, a pro-life activist by the name of Savannah Craven was conducting a man-on-the-street style interview with a Brianna Rivers, and after 20 minutes of back and forth about abortion, she said, “I’m not the one who admitted they would be okay with killing babies in foster care and killing children that have been abused,” and the subject of her interview subsequently punched her in the face.
When I originally saw the video making the rounds on Twitter, there were thousands of comments (with thousands of likes) siding with the attacker, insisting that the interviewer “got what she had coming” and that she deserved her assault because of what she said.
On social media, the assailant broke her silence in a series of posts. “To Savannah, I sincerely apologize but cannot sit around and allow you to continue pushing this one sided narrative. I understand hands being put on someone is never the answer, but throwing rocks and hiding hands is worse. She knows the truth and she needs to release the footage in its entirety. Savannah is a professional antagonist not a ‘reporter’ and the truth will be told.”
Later, she wrote, “I will not allow my image to be defamed by this woman’s actions. Anyone who knows me knows how respectful I am, I don’t even litter, there’s no way you believe I’m punching people for disagreeing with my POV.”
In Texas, a high school football player was murdered over a seating dispute.
CBS reports:
One witness said they were with Metcalf under their school’s tent during the track meet when someone they didn’t know, identified as Anthony, came over to them.
The witness said Metcalf told Anthony to leave. Anthony allegedly grabbed his bag, opened it, reached inside, and said, “Touch me and see what happens.”
A witness said Metcalf touched Anthony, and another witness said Metcalf grabbed Anthony.
Police said that’s when Anthony pulled out a knife and stabbed Metcalf once in the chest and ran away.
Anthony is trying to call this self defense, and people are so blinded by racial animus that they’re writing fan fiction to craft a backstory they have no evidence actually exists.
When a situation like this gains traction, there’s always a bunch of he-said, she-said that can easily muddy the waters and be used to manipulate the gullible in one direction or the other, so until the dust has settled and we’re able to get more reliable and verifiable details, I’ll be sticking with the police report.
It honestly seemed like male egos and adolescent hormones running wild, with Austin trying to piss on his proverbial hydrant and bark a smaller dog into submission, and Karmelo, knowing he couldn’t win in a 1-1 fight due to their relative builds, was so desperate to avoid temporary humiliation that he threw his life away in a moment of miscalculated machismo.
Based on what I read in that report, Karmelo was never afraid for his life. At most, he was afraid for his pride.
High schoolers fight about things that don’t matter. Both students were probably being unreasonable leading up to the stabbing – and in the civilized world that ends with maybe a black eye and a suspension.
But what was supposed to be a dumb dispute that neither student would remember 10 years down the line ended one life and threw another one away – and no matter how many flattering facts his apologists dig up about him, unless something significant was missing from the police report, Karmelo Anthony bears the blame.
Everything about what he did leading up to and following him plunging a knife into the heart of a stranger was incriminating – from the threat he issued beforehand, to the way he immediately fled, to tossing his weapon. When he was being walked to the cop car, he asked if what happened “could be considered” self defense. Once in the car he said something like “I told him not to put his hands on me!” and sorry, but that’s just not the verbiage of someone that was fighting for their life. His actions wreaked of guilt.
People want to believe that Austin Metcalf was some racist bully dropping slurs like he was a character written by Quentin Tarantino – so much so that they’re photoshopping pictures of a dead kid’s Instagram.
Instagram doesn’t let allow capitalization of letters in handles, btw.
Let’s pretend this is true, even though we have no evidence to support it.
He could have been screaming the N-word at the top of his lungs; unless he was using brass knuckles that spelled it out to beat him, Karmelo Anthony had no reason to stab him.
The irony isn’t lost on me that the same people that advocate for soft on crime policies that excuse black teenagers with real rap sheets acting like GTA characters because “juvenile mistakes shouldn’t ruin their lives” are trying to justify a white kid being slaughtered in broad daylight based on words he might have never said and things he might have never done.
There are situations where violence can be rationalized. My mind goes back to stories I’ve read about parents of children that were abused or murdered, deciding to take justice into their own hands. But flying off of the handle over petty, personal offenses will never make sense.
As I’ve watched these events unfold over the past week or so, I’ve been forced to confront the fact that while people are capable of irrationality and violence regardless of their backgrounds, black Americans are the only group that seem to routinely embrace these attributes and the criminals that embody them.
The facts of a given case don’t determine how black America processes it, but instead become irrelevant and inconvenient obstacles to navigate in pursuit of a sociologically convenient narrative.
Instead of condemning Brianna Rivers for punching someone in the face, we’re condemning the victim for hurting her feelings.
Instead of condemning Karmelo Anthony for literally stabbing someone to death, we’re condemning the victim for maybe, potentially, hypothetically bullying him.
Growing up, it was common to hear things like “black people have to work twice as hard to get half as much,” as people tried to prepare you for the real world. They insisted that black people were held to higher standards and judged harshly compared to their white counterparts. And while that may have been the case at one point, I think we’re long past it. Instead, black adolescents and adults are being given a benefit of the doubt they haven’t earned, judged on a bell curve for toddlers.
Because I believe in holding my race to the same standards as everyone else, I’m accused of self hatred. Because I won’t coddle criminals, I’ll be called a coon. So be it. But a culture that shirks accountability, bending over backwards to defend the indefensible will never know true freedom or true equality – and they’ll have no one but themselves to blame.
what do you think?