Do You Hear What I Hear? The Dog Whistle and the Fear It Feeds
Tariffs have dominated the national conversation this past week. According to some, what Trump has done is downright awful. Disrespectful, even. And it affects everyone, from the elderly to the young. His tariff policy sent the stock market into a spiral. It was one of the worst crashes in recent American history.
For many Americans, it wasn’t just a headline. It was a hard hit. 401(k) accounts took a deep and sudden loss, one of only four times in American history that retirement savings fell so sharply, so quickly. Grocery bills spiked. The cost of buying a car jumped overnight. The fallout was immediate and personal.
While a few cautious Democrats stayed quiet, others saw the crash as their signal to take to the streets in protest. It all felt like a quiet Soros tactic. A calculated manipulation of the market, using Trump’s long-telegraphed tariff threats to trigger financial chaos. Like a Van Gogh painting, a masterpiece of disruption. That’s how Soros once scored off the British pound. With a kind of artistic precision, he broke the Bank of England. So why wouldn’t it be possible again? That’s the mainstream narrative. But no one wants to talk about how many Democrats supported tariffs in the past. How many Democrats have argued China needs to be checked and are now mad Trump has done what Obama or Biden didn’t have the courage to do.
In Democrat fashion, the streets filled quickly. Marches, signs, chants in the name of trade, jobs, and the economy.
At the same time, progressives began doubling down on their small wins, disguising political theater as revolution.
Cory Booker took a victory lap for outlasting Strom Thurmond’s filibuster, a harkening back to the era of Jim Crow, when Black Americans were openly oppressed. The comparison is unclear, as Thurmond argued against legislation while Booker argued for nothing. Especially not for the ADOS community affected by the policies of those like Strom Thurmond.
Perhaps Booker sees this symbolic gesture as paving the way for his run for president. Every Democratic politician knows they need ADOS to win. He is clearly targeting the ADOS community, as most of his recent posts are aimed in our direction, invoking the names of Ida B. Wells and Fannie Lou Hamer. It is shameful and insulting, as if we haven’t seen this same playbook used before. Whenever Democrats want to galvanize the Black community, they start whispering tales of slavery, Jim Crow, and Black Wall Street while doing nothing for the ADOS community. During the portions of his speech I listened to, Booker never once mentioned legislation that would directly affect American Black citizens. Most of his remarks centered on every other marginalized and oppressed group except for ADOS.
On the same day Booker delivered his 25-hour spectacle, Democrats celebrated a Supreme Court win in the state of Wisconsin, a victory that promises them two more seats in the House. A Republican loss, they say. A power shift, shadowed by the looming threat of impeachment.
This convergence of events — the market crash, the protests, the political theatrics — created a climate ripe for misdirection. Then, right on cue, Trump lifted the curtain on his tariff expansion, and chaos erupted. Protests branded #HandsOff2025 were suddenly everywhere. Progressive speakers, already hand-selected, had their speeches prepared. Signs were printed. The T-shirts were ready. It all unfolded with eerie precision, as if it had been scripted long before the first headline hit.
Republicans began to scramble. They could not figure out how to respond to the crash or to the outrage flooding the streets. Talking points collided. Blame was tossed back and forth. And as fear crept in, both sides rushed to their media platforms to make the case for and against tariffs.
But through all the noise, some of us stood still. Many of us understand that tariffs come with serious economic trade-offs. We know what Trump is doing will create chaos in the market, but we also know the chaos may be necessary. The hope is that things will eventually balance out, that the economy will adjust, and the playing field will shift in our favor. So, we wait. We watch. We listen.
Yet, as the tables began to wobble, the rhetoric spiraled. The far left and far right retreated into their corners. Centrists in both parties tried to stay grounded, but the middle was eroding. The eruption spread, and with it, a familiar fear. And just as expected, one side barked first. The far right blew the dog whistle.
Republicans, and I mean white and Black Republicans, quietly introduced another story into the national bloodstream. A new story wrapped in an old, dangerous narrative: the violent Black man. The story of Karmelo Anthony, a Black boy, and the seventeen-year-old white boy he stabbed to death. When it started appearing in my algorithm, I ignored it. I looked at the Black boy and everything inside me said he’s not the type. I didn’t want to hear anything else, so I kept scrolling.
But then I heard voices from our own side. Black voices like the Cartier Family Podcast, young Black men, proud Trump supporters, disparaging Karmelo Anthony without hesitation or facts. Charleston White also took to social media, furious that Karmelo had a GoFundMe. Jason Whitlock took to his podcast condemning Anthony and disparaging the Black community. It was astonishing to see. It was as if they didn’t realize they were the ones holding the water hose now, turning it back on their own people. They condemned this young Black boy and, even worse, some went as far as to suggest he deserved the death penalty.
It’s not new. During the Wilmington coup, even some Black leaders condemned Alexander Manly, the editor of The Daily Record, the Black newspaper in Wilmington. It was the Black elite who quietly placed a letter in his mailbox, urging him never to return. Such a familiar refrain.
It’s the same tactic being amplified by white conservative voices—Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, and others—who thrive on pushing the narrative that Black youth are inherently violent and that the only solution is more policing, more punishment, more division. These figures strategize. They exploit fear. They paint themselves as patriots while refusing to confront the very systems of inequality that drive the violence they claim to despise.
Matt Walsh took to his podcast and condemned Black boys as hardwired for violence, making broad generalizations without facts. He spoke as if he personally knew the young man, projecting fear into fiction. He never mentioned school shootings, Dylan Roof, or the suicide epidemic plaguing white boys.
Michael Knowles went even further. He claimed Karmelo Anthony was likely raised in poverty, lacked spiritual guidance, and had probably shown violent tendencies for years. He blamed the social systems and the community around Karmelo for turning a blind eye, speaking as if his assumptions were truths. This is dangerous—not only because it's rooted in bias, but because it ignores the larger context.
Meanwhile, no one is discussing the psychological trauma many white boys endure either. Suicide rates. School shootings. Dylan Roof. Ted Bundy. These stories fade while Black youth remain the symbolic threat.
“If the white men can stand negro supremacy we neither can nor will. Tho’ I do not believe for a moment that they will submit any longer. It is time for the oft quoted shotgun to play a part, and an active one, in the elections.”
This isn’t the first time we've seen Black power provoke fear. In 1898, in Wilmington, North Carolina, a local government made up of both Black and white leaders was violently overthrown by armed white supremacists. It is still the only successful coup d’état in American history. Black residents had begun to build wealth, hold office, and publish newspapers that openly challenged white supremacy. In response, white mobs burned Black-owned businesses, killed dozens of Black citizens, and forced elected officials to resign at gunpoint. The coup destroyed what was one of the most progressive and integrated communities in the South at the time.
During the Wilmington coup, even some Black leaders condemned Alexander Manly, the editor of The Daily Record, the Black newspaper in Wilmington. It was the Black elite who quietly placed a letter in his mailbox, urging him never to return. Such a familiar refrain.
The dog whistle.
According to Jeff Metcalf, father of Austin Metcalf, Karmelo Anthony stabbed his son to death for nothing more than asking him to move. The father claimed Karmelo was under a school tent and introduced himself. First, he claimed his son grabbed Anthony and told him to move. Then, he said no—he grabbed Anthony’s backpack, and that Karmelo, unprovoked, pulled out a knife from the very same bag and stabbed his “poor boy” in the heart. The story just doesn’t add up. Like Sandra Bland—had she complied, maybe she would be alive today. Anthony should have just moved. That’s the narrative. Austin’s father stood before the camera with a fake tear falling from his eye and asked, “What kind of parents does this boy have?”
Because buried in that question is a much deeper accusation: Look at what’s happening here. These Negroes are out of control. They don’t know their place. They think they can just take shelter under our tents, walk through our spaces, and not be questioned.
The message was clear back during Jim Crow and Civil Rights and is true now: Black advancement must be stopped by any means necessary, because blacks need to be controlled. This is exactly the kind of story that speaks directly to the fear of the rigid white Republican base, the base that believes it has just won an unspoken cultural war. Not simply because of Trump’s return to the White House, but because 20 percent of Black voters backed him. And now, with Trump promising a supposed reckoning for all communities, the American Black community is starting to band together. Republicans, particularly in the South, recognize that their core voting population is shrinking. When you combine ADOS and Black immigrants with liberal and independent voters, conservatives are outnumbered. And the ADOS voting bloc stands as one of the most powerful in the nation. This truth terrifies white conservatives—especially white southerners.
Now let’s flip the coin.
There can be a case made that Karmelo Anthony sought shelter from the rain under the tent of another school and he had been attacked. Particularly by the two Metcalf boys. They approached him and tried to make him move because he didn’t belong there. Karmelo acted in self-defense and stood up for himself—and that was the crime. We have a similar story in the Ahmaud Arbery case when a man went behind a house to get water and was tracked down like an animal, gunned down by two white men. He had been labeled the aggressor until the video appeared. Perhaps this encounter between Karmelo and Metcalf had nothing to do with race and yet here we have pundits playing this story about race. The race of the Black boy and his violent nature.
Now we all know someone has crossed a line, but when we hear all the facts it seems as if Austin Metcalf and his twin brothers were aggressors in this situation. But without any other facts and just opinion, we can’t make accusations. Instead, Walsh, Knowles, and even Black boys like the Cartier brothers tell the story from their own perspective.
The crime becomes a symbol. The Black boy isn’t a teenager anymore—he’s a threat. An invader. Much worse, an invader with a knife. And the white boy becomes a martyr for a nation desperate to protect its fantasy of control. It’s the same narrative that has long painted Black men as rapists or murderers.
That’s the real message. And far white Republicans hear it loud and clear. Black Republicans only see distorted facts and, without knowledge and filled with self-hate, they sell the same fake narrative. Even as they defend the white boy, they don’t recognize they could also be in the same situation—seeking refuge from the storm, getting a drink of water, or smoking a cigarette in their own vehicle.
The only way to win is to galvanize their base and to do this they have to sound the alarm. Not with facts. Not with unity. But with fear. And that fear is delivered through a familiar tactic: a dog whistle disguised as outrage. A narrative slithered across headlines and echoed in comment sections. One that says, “Look at them. They’re out of control. They are angry, violent and vicious—inherently.”
In The Red Record by Ida B. Wells, she shares plenty of stories about the ways Black men were attacked and lynched without a shred of evidence—accused of supposedly assaulting some innocent white person. The only real difference between the 1860s and today is that Black folks are beginning to fight back. We saw that during the Montgomery brawl, after a white mob attacked a group of Black people. Yet none of these things has stopped whites from attacking Blacks and being justified for killing them.
This week, I had so many other stories to write about: Cory Booker and his performance that is supposed to be historic, and of course, Kanye West in his Klan outfit made of black leather. But I had to stop to address this story—a story I didn’t have the wherewithal to click on when it originally appeared in my algorithm but was forced to confront because so many voices were attacking all Black boys. More importantly, Democrats have still been silent—as if they quietly might agree. It is clear Republicans want this one crime to serve as an example, a justification for punishing all Black boys. This is no different than the case of the Central Park Five—falsely accused of raping a white woman.
This story is bigger than one story. It’s about the battle for our sons.
We are failing both Black and white boys in this country, but in different ways. Black boys are disproportionately affected by gun violence and homicide. In 2020, they had a firearm homicide rate more than ten times higher than their white peers. But curiously, it is Black-on-Black crime. At the same time, white boys are more likely to die by suicide and to carry out school shootings. In that same year, white youth had the highest firearm suicide rates, and white males make up the overwhelming majority of school shooters. White males attack more innocent individuals—than those who attack them.
These realities paint a bleak but honest picture. Black boys are being killed by others. White boys are dying by their own hands—or committing violence against others in planned, high-profile attacks. Both are symptoms of a larger national illness. One of neglect, cultural isolation, and an unwillingness to address the pain brewing in our communities. If we don’t face this truth head-on, we will continue to fail an entire generation of boys—and by extension, the girls and communities connected to them.
We are at a tipping point. ADOS, Black immigrants, white, Hispanic and Asian, centrists, leftists, conservatives—we all must make a choice. Not between parties, but between power and illusion. Between repeating cycles or cultivating a new American narrative. It is time for us as a country to rewrite history. This can only begin by changing the narrative and asking bigger questions.
Why would a white boy force a Black boy to get from beneath a tent that belonged to the school?
That is up to a jury to answer.
Every dog whistle carries the same message: fall in line or be punished. But the beauty of this moment is—we’re no longer deaf to it.
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P.S. I am so happy that Karmelo Anthony’s family has remained silence. While Jeff MetCalf is using his son’s death to make the rounds to the media. Everyday with a story that shifts and shape shifts into a new lie. However, we have now learned that Karmelo Anthony is an honor roll student, the captain of his football team, he saved a life at fourteen, he has never been in trouble with the law. He comes from a respectful household with a mother and father and knows right from wrong. As the right-leaning media disparages this young man’s character out of fear, one thing is clear social media seems to have gotten their facts wrong. Podcasters like Knowls and Walsh have become as vicious, vile and biased as CNN. they have argued a point based on inaccurate data. We also learned that Austin Metcalf and his twin brothers were bullies. We have heard nothing more from the pundits…
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