A Howard University journalism professor drew backlash after publishing a Substack post that appeared to blame Austin Metcalf’s father for the teen athlete’s killing, sharply criticizing the grieving parent and arguing he had failed to teach his son that “black children have boundaries.”
In the post, shared Wednesday, Dr. Stacey Patton focused on Jeff Metcalf’s emotional courtroom remarks directed at Karmelo Anthony, 19, after Anthony was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
The Texas father had urged Anthony to look him in the eye as he described the pain of losing his son, saying in a tearful victim impact statement Tuesday that he had been robbed of a future with Austin.
“You failed yourself. You failed your parents. You failed society. You don’t belong in this community,” Jeff said, reading from a notebook.
“This was never about race,” Jeff Metcalf also said, responding to claims raised by pro-Anthony demonstrators during the case. “This is about right and wrong.”
Patton, however, argued that Jeff Metcalf was the one who had “failed,” and she went further by accusing him of raising his son to be racist.
“You stood in that courtroom and told a black teenager he failed his parents, himself, and society. But perhaps the harder truth is that you failed your son first,” the professor wrote in the piece titled “Dear Jeff Metcalf: Your Son is Dead Because You Failed to Teach Him That Black Boys Have Boundaries.”
Patton argued that the father saying that he raised his son to be a “warrior” and “leader” was inherently racist because “those words too often mean dominance.”
The 48-year-old who holds a PhD focused on African-American studies from Rutgers University went on to say that Austin, 17, knowing how to hunt was telling of the “white masculinity” that “was being celebrated” around him.
“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 failed to teach him that ‘community’ does not mean white boys get to decide who belongs and who does not.”
Critics were aghast at Patton’s cold-hearted and calculated attention seeking.
“Dr. Patton literally turned a tragic altercation between teenagers into an ancestral tribe war,” Xaviaer DuRousseau, 29, an ex-Black Lives Matter activist turned conservative influencer, told The Post.
Here’s the latest on Karmelo Anthony’s murder conviction:
“And this tribalistic mentality has replaced accountability within the black community — a tragedy within itself that ultimately leads more teens to the fate of Karmelo.”
Patton, a self-described “experienced professor of journalism” taught at Morgan State from 2016 to 2023 and was an adjunct professor at Montclair State University from 2006 to 2011, according to her LinkedIn.
She was a senior writer and editor for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund from 2008 to 2011.
She was a reporter for various publications, including The Baltimore Sun from 1997 to 1999 and The Washington Post from 1999 to 2000.
She also wrote several books, including a 2007 memoir called “That Mean Old Yesterday” and a 2017 book titled “Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America.”
Her next book, “Strung Up: How White American Learned to Lynch Black Children,” will be released in October.
The topic of race has been prominent since Austin’s April 2025 murder during a track meet at David Kuykendall Stadium in Frisco, with Anthony’s supporters claiming he was being unfairly persecuted because he is black.
Jeff Metcalf, Anthony’s attorney Mike Howard, and Howard University did not return requests for comment while Patton declined.
1 comment
This person should be fired for teaching hatred, for getting her facts incorrect and obviously for being stupid. Not professor material! Needs to be fired.