Rick Chow shot a 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack Belton in the back for water bottles that he never actually stole. Yes, his life was worth less to this man than a bottle of water. A jury in South Carolina acquitted Chow of Cyrus’ murder.
Not even manslaughter?
Although he has shot people in the past, Chow was acquitted and is a free man today. The state of South Carolina also seems to feel that Cyrus’ life was worth less than a bottle of water.
Meanwhile in Texas, 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony was outnumbered and bullied by White teens at a sporting event when one began to shove him. Karmelo stabbed him and, at 19, has been sentenced to 35 years for murder. He will be my age, 54, when released, will spend the next 35 years doing unpaid labor, and will never regain his voting rights. He has been returned to the slavery his ancestors endured. (That is what incarceration is.)
Not even manslaughter?
Our children are not safe in White towns or White spaces. Anti-Blackness in Asian American and Latin American communities makes those folks’ spaces frequently unsafe. This is why I chose to raise my children in Baltimore. The anti-Blackness in the U.S. puts us in far more danger than anything you might’ve seen on The Wire.
The real racial sickness in the Karmelo Anthony and Austin Metcalf case is not just that America reflexively sees Black boys as threats. It is that this country has a profound, almost religious inability to recognize white boys as violent, dangerous, deviant, and frightening despite this country’s long history of evidence.
White boys can be hulking, aggressive, entitled, bullying, reckless, and cruel, and still the culture rushes to soften them into “sons,” “athletes,” “good kids,” “troubled teens,” or “boys who made a mistake.” But let a Black boy say, “Don’t touch me,” and suddenly everybody and their mama becomes fluent in menace, intent, and criminal psychology.
The fact is, America has trained itself to see danger in Black fear and innocence in white violence, and that is why so many people cannot even ask whether Karmelo Anthony was afraid without first deciding he must have been the threat. This is a country that keeps pretending white aggression is not dangerous until somebody Black survives it.
Kyle Rittenhouse crossed state lines with a rifle, killed two people, and went home free.
Karmelo Anthony was scared and defended himself. He faces life in prison.
Cyrus Carmack-Belton was 14 years old, shot in the back while running away. The jury watched it on video. They still said not guilty.
Same country. Same justice system. Completely different outcomes based on the color of their skin.
We are exhausted. We are heartbroken. And some days, if we are being honest, we feel completely hopeless. Because how many verdicts do we have to survive before something changes?
I’ve been sitting with the Karmelo Anthony verdict. As a father of two Black boys, and as someone who has walked alongside countless young Black men at Alcorn, I am grieved.
Karmelo, 19 years old, will spend the next 18+ years in a Texas prison, sentenced by a predominantly white jury after prosecutors systematically struck every Black woman from the jury pool. The judge allowed it. The system called it justice.
Whether you agree with his defense or not, that young man deserved to have his humanity weighed by a jury of his actual peers.
He did not get that. The jury took less than three hours to decide his fate. Draw your own conclusions. But when a jury deliberates that quickly on a case this complex, this racially charged, this consequential it at least raises the question of whether they walked in already knowing what they were going to do.
To be sure, I am praying for the Metcalf family, who lost a son and will grieve that loss for the rest of their lives. Their pain is real and it is sacred.
And I am praying for Karmelo and his mother, who asked for mercy and received 35 years.
This is not a moment to be silent. It is a moment to be honest: our system does not weigh Black lives and white lives on the same scale. Until it does, the work continues.
Related Off-site Links:
South Carolina Jury Finds Store Owner Rick Chow Not Guilty of Murder in Killing of Black Teen Cyrus Carmack Belton – Associated Press via CNN (June 1, 2026).
Karmelo Anthony Found Guilty of the Murder of Austin Metcalf and Sentenced to 35 Years – Adria R Walker (The Guardian, June 9, 2026).
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