What the Killing of Austin Metcalf Tells us About Culture and Free Will
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On Wednesday, April 2, an altercation at a North Texas track meet turned violent. One young man stabbed another young man to death. The 17-year-old who died, Austin Metcalf, was white; the 17-year-old who lived – and is now in jail on $1 million bond – is Karmelo Anthony, who is black. These facts are not in dispute.
On Monday, the Anthony family released a statement that reads in part, “…during this challenging time, we ask for prayers for both families and we ask for your patience and respect for the legal process as we seek the truth.” It is exactly the right thing to say. The Anthonys no doubt wish to believe their son was defending himself from Austin Metcalf; their lawyers may well argue Karmelo was provoked. Yet at this early stage, the family does not advance a theory of the case. They are grieving, and they know the Metcalfs are grieving, and they plead with the public for “patience and respect for the legal process.”
Judging from the social media firestorm of the last few days, the Anthony family plea has fallen on proverbial deaf ears. A great many people have decided they already know the truth. They know that one of these young men was an innocent victim, and the other a thug. They know too that each young man was animated by something greater than his own conscience. Each was pushed by biology, or history, or culture, towards an unavoidable tragedy.
On X, far right-wing activists (to whom I will not link) declare that the killing is a sign that whites and blacks can never live together in harmony. Elon Musk, for better or for worse, has declared that X (formerly Twitter) will have a very light hand in policing speech; racism of a very old and unpleasant sort is once again allowed to flourish. The old canard that black men are inherently violent can be openly shared once more.
Also on X, as well as the more-heavily regulated Meta sites, the opposite view trundles about. On Facebook, the journalist Stacey Patton writes (in a public post) that “Karmelo was a target. Not just of a bully’s fists, but of a larger, unspoken rule in America: White boys are allowed to assert power, and Black boys are punished for resisting it.” Ms. Patton is not patient; she does not need to wait to declare Austin a racist bully with a “dead-eyed stare” -- and Karmelo just a “trembling kid who didn’t want to die.”
Karmelo in yellow.
Austin in yellow.
Ms. Patton and the bigots on X imagine they have nothing in common. They do, of course. They share not only a self-righteous certainty about the facts of this case, but they are also convinced they share deep insight into the personality, character, and impulses of Austin and Karmelo. Both sides are convinced that a proper understanding of race is essential to understanding this particular tragedy – and all the other tragedies (George Floyd, Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Rodney King) that preceded it.
They are convinced that none of us can do anything other than be a product of our culture. They peddle a radical determinism, one in which the color of your skin automatically indicts or absolves. They are latter-day Calvinists, committed not only to the idea of predestination but to the doctrine of total depravity. In the far-right version, black people are particularly depraved by their very nature. In the far-left version, institutional racism has rendered whites depraved and indifferent to black humanity. Both sides mock the idea that any of us, black or white, can ever extricate ourselves from this reality. The far-right believes we can only be saved by separating the races; the far-left believes that whites can only be redeemed by submitting gracefully and unreservedly to black leadership.
Each group stands united in a sneering contempt for naïve fools who believe in personal agency. One notes that both the far-left and the far-right invariably save their most poisonous bromides for centrist liberals, whom they despise for their noxious prattling about ridiculous concepts like individual autonomy, personal character, and the absurd chimera of free will.
The far-right describe themselves often as “Based.” The far left continue to see themselves as “Woke.” When you look at the world through your Based or Woke glasses, you realize you have no need to wait for silly things like investigations or police reports or sworn testimony. You already know the facts of the case, regardless of what the evidence will show. You disdain complexity, because to the Based and the Woke, acknowledging “complexity” is nothing more than cynical complicity with a corrupt system. If you could really see the truth, you would see it as starkly simple. You would see a story that is, um, black and white.
I don’t know exactly what happened in a track and field stadium in Frisco, Texas, six days ago. Neither do you. If you think otherwise, I ask you to think again. I ask you to consider the possibility that your vision of human agency is too cramped, your determinism too obdurate, and your curiosity too stunted by ideology. I ask you to join the Anthony family in their patience -- and in their shared grief with the Metcalfs.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” So Cassius tells his companion as they contemplate the murder of Julius Caesar. Cassius has no patience with a fatalism that sees human potential circumscribed by astrology, or history, or anything else. That line gets quoted often, but the one before it matters too: “Men at some time are masters of their fates.” Depravity is real, terror is real, violence is real, and yes, racism is real. None extend to the bone without our consent.
Whatever happened between Karmelo and Austin – and I remind you again, we do not know what you think we know – choices were made that transcend culture, history and biology. To say otherwise is to have too small an understanding of what it means to be human. We really are sometimes masters of our fates, and “sometimes” is a good deal more often than the ideologues wish us to believe.