Frisco Schools Create Dozens Of Karmelo Anthonys By Refusing To Discipline Black Students
Last week in Frisco, Texas, 19-year-old Karmelo Anthony was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison. No one in the jury believed his claim of self-defense and instead found that Anthony provoked a confrontation with student Austin Metcalf by going into his school’s tent during a track meet, taunting the students there, refusing to leave despite repeated requests, and finally plunging a knife into Austin’s heart after being nudged.
It remains a mystery why exactly Anthony did this, which might explain why so many people even entertained his claim of self-defense. But the facts of the case show that Anthony apparently had no other reason to kill Metcalf than pure malice and aggression.
One could go further and ask why Anthony harbored these violent impulses in the first place. He lived in Frisco, an affluent, family-friendly suburb with good schools. He had two parents at home to take care of him. He played sports and had plenty of friends. He was a month away from graduating and could have done anything. So why throw it away?
In the absence of evidence, it is anyone’s guess. Perhaps Anthony’s supporters are right in assuming he was somehow bullied and held back by a racist system. Or perhaps Anthony was radicalized by toxic internet content that encouraged him to kill a white person. Or perhaps he was suffering from some unknown mental illness or emotional trauma.
Or, most likely, perhaps Anthony was a willful, irresponsible youth who was never seriously disciplined or corrected at school or at home, and therefore felt entitled to hurt and even kill people because he felt like it.
I have taught in this area of North Texas for several years and have encountered many students like Anthony. They terrorize their classes, do little work, and misbehave constantly. Yet they are never corrected or held back because they are black.
Like most districts in Texas, Frisco Independent School District has a two-tiered system of discipline. While nonblack students who misbehave are given the consequences of detention, suspension, or mandatory time at the Discipline Alternative Education Program, black students rarely experience any of this.
Instead, they might be sent to an administrator for yet another friendly conversation and returned to class without comment. If this continues to happen, the student’s parents might start complaining that the teacher is racist and targeting their child unfairly. If so, the teacher can either continue sending the student out in hopes that something changes, or she can simply let the kid play on his phone or laptop and let him take regular hour-long bathroom breaks so he doesn’t disturb the class.
The same approach applies to academic performance. If nonblack students refuse to do their work and receive a failing grade, the teacher will hear little about it. If this happens with a black student, the teacher will need to present extensive documentation of interventions, calls home, and opportunities for reassessment. Thus, for peace of mind, many teachers learn to give all their students, especially black students, a passing grade and make their class a total blowoff.
While this seems to work out in the short term for everyone, this creates significant problems over time. Those black students who struggle in class in elementary school only become worse in high school. As a rule, they are never held accountable, and this causes them to make little progress over the years. Besides rendering them unfit for the world beyond school, it also prevents them from truly integrating into the school community. Many of the nonblack students learn to steer clear of their black peers and avoid talking to them, which leaves the black students to associate only with one another.
By the time they reach high school, most of the black students will form a group and separate themselves from the rest of the student body, often having a reputation for being rowdy, belligerent, and uncooperative. The administrators will usually stand guard nearby when this group congregates in the halls and harasses other kids, and teachers will look for ways to mitigate their disruptions in class.
Sometimes these students are encouraged to participate in sports. Coaches usually have more latitude for disciplining their players and can channel any excess energy toward something healthy and productive. Even so, athletics can only do so much and sometimes can make the situation worse by giving an otherwise bad student a sense of entitlement for excelling at a sport.
In the end, I believe this hands-off treatment of black students at Frisco ISD played a large part in leading a student like Karmelo Anthony to stab Austin Metcalf. He appears to be one among many difficult black students who never grew up, took responsibility, and developed empathy for his peers.
While Anthony’s parents obviously deserve most of the blame for how their son turned out, the policies of Frisco ISD also likely played a role. Anthony should not have been at that track meet, much less allowed to roam free without supervision. He should have known that instigating fights and attacking students is wrong and unacceptable. He should have been held to the same standards as every other student instead of being left to develop homicidal delusions. It’s telling that no counselor or teacher testified on Anthony’s behalf at his trial. This strongly indicates he had a record of dangerous misconduct.
It wasn’t always this way. In 2020, after an audit from the Texas Education Agency that cited “disproportionate discipline among Black students,” Frisco ISD changed its policy to let black students off the hook. Hopefully, this horrible crime will cause the district to end this negligence. It wasn’t enough that Karmelo Anthony enjoyed all the privileges of living in Frisco; he needed to live up to those privileges by becoming civilized and peaceful.
For Metcalf’s sake as well as Anthony’s, this disciplinary double-standard must end so that another senseless murder doesn’t happen, schools can be safe, and diverse communities like Frisco can come together again.
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