Karmelo Anthony’s Imaginary Oppression
31st August 2026
James Talarico, the Democrat candidate from Texas running for the U.S. Senate, recently weighed in on the conviction of Karmelo Anthony for the April 2025 murder of Austin Metcalf.
“Right now, we’ve got a system that doesn’t serve all Americans equally, and, and we know that black Texans have been, um, have not gotten the justice they deserve,” he said.
This is a perfect illustration of the Sixth Woke Commandment in my book “The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)”—“You Shall Be Woke to Imaginary Oppression.”
Anthony was convicted by a jury drawn from the area he lived in. He told police, “I was protecting myself,” but those jurors apparently did not believe he was reasonably in fear of his life so as to justify fatally plunging a knife into another boy’s heart.
Activists and race-hustlers in Texas and nationally claimed that Anthony was unfairly convicted, mostly because there were no African American jurors. The ugly implication is that black jurors would ignore the facts and decide guilt or innocence based on race alone. I hope not.
Of course they do. That’s what identity politics is all about.