On April 2, 2025, Karmelo Anthony, 17, a Black teenager, stabbed Austin Metcalf, 17, a White teenager, through the heart at a track meet in Frisco, Texas. Anthony was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 35 years.

What followed was more revealing than the crime. Jeff Metcalf — Austin's father — spent 14 months performing public Christian forgiveness and racial universalism, insisting the killing was never about race, rejecting White grievance activists, and extending grace to the family of his son's killer. The other side raised $630,000 for Anthony's defense and called Metcalf a racist anyway.

Jeff Metcalf is a case study in a particular kind of White American — older, Christian, colorblind by conviction — who believes that if he just refuses to see race, race will return the favor. It won't. And it may take something as extreme as a son's murder to dislodge that belief.