A Howard University professor is under fire for blaming Austin Metcalf’s father for not teaching his son enough about black culture, which she seemed to insinuate resulted in his murder.
Karmelo Anthony was convicted Tuesday of murdering Austin at a track meet in April 2025 and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Austin’s father, Jeff Metcalf, admonished Anthony for making the case about race and told him he’s been feeling “pure unfiltered rage” while grieving the loss of his son.
“I said from day one, this was never about race, please don’t politicize it,” Jeff said. “But what did you choose to do, both. It’s about right and wrong. We’re all humans. We all bleed the same color.”
“You failed your parents, you failed yourself, and you failed society. You don’t belong in this community,” he continued, “You’re going to prison. You can’t even look me in the eyes right now, but you can stab my f*cking son in the heart.”
Dr. Stacey Patton published an article on Substack on Wednesday titled, “Dear Jeff Metcalf: Your Son Is Dead Because You Failed to Teach Him That Black Boys Have Boundaries.”
Patton responded to the grieving father’s heartbreaking victim’s impact statement by saying it was time to “talk about Jeff Metcalf’s failure as a father.” She said this was appropriate to do because it was the same treatment given to the families of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice.
“In your own memorial language, you told us about the kind of white boyhood Austin was raised inside. It was a boyhood steeped in conquest language, hunting rituals, warrior fantasies, masculine toughness, and the romance of force,” she wrote. “You told us about a child praised not just for being kind, curious, gentle, or careful, but for becoming a ‘leader’ and a ‘warrior’ in a racist culture where those words too often mean dominance.”
She argued Austin Metcalf “learned early how to hold a weapon, how to aim, how to take down a living thing, how to be proud of the kill, how to have that moment folded into the mythology of father and son,” and that set him up to be a victim of violence.
“YOU taught Austin what it meant to be a ‘warrior.’ YOU taught him that toughness was honorable. YOU taught him that taking up space was normal. YOU taught him that confrontation was courage. YOU socialized Austin into entitlement long before he ever reached that track meet,” Patton wrote in the lengthy essay.
“YOU failed to teach your boy that black children have boundaries. YOU failed [to] teach humility, restraint, or the sacred fact that another person’s body is not your jurisdiction. YOU failed to teach him that another child’s space is not a challenge to be conquered. … YOU obviously failed to teach your son that touching, confronting, crowding, testing, or policing another person can have consequences. You failed, Jeff,” she added.
The Howard professor ultimately concluded that “black children have good reason to be on guard around white bodies.”
She went on to say she was glad Karmelo Anthony never looked the grieving father in the eye, as he had requested while he read his statement.
“There was power in him not looking at you,” Patton wrote. “There was refusal in it. There was survival in it. There was an ancient knowing in it. Because black people know what it means when a white man demands eye contact from a black child after already deciding what that child is. We know the old ritual. We know that sometimes ‘look at me’ is not a request for humanity. It is a demand for surrender. And Karmelo did not surrender.”
Professor Patton’s Substack has nearly fifty thousand followers, and her open letter to Jeff Metcalf has received nearly two thousand likes. But not everyone was happy with it.
“Demonic,” one commenter replied.
“This is pretty disgusting,” another person wrote. “They’re asserting a right to murder white people who aren’t docile, deferential, and subordinate. Who don’t ‘know their place.’ Some of them have become the racists they claim to hate.”
“Black boys, and all boys for that matter, should have a boundary if not stabbing someone to death. That’s the boundary,” another wrote. “It’s an extremely easy boundary NOT to cross, billions of people live their whole lives without ever crossing it. If there’s ANY boundary, it’s that.”
