Stephen A. Smith has built a career on saying the uncomfortable part out loud. This time, his target was not a missed shot, a bad trade, or an overpaid superstar. It was the national reaction to the Karmelo Anthony case, and the silence he says followed a deadly Juneteenth weekend in Chicago.
The contrast is hard to ignore. On one side, we have the highly charged debate over Karmelo Anthony, the Texas teenager convicted in the fatal stabbing of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a Frisco track meet. On the other side, we have Chicago, where an extended Juneteenth holiday weekend left eight people dead and 39 others wounded in shootings across the city.
Smith’s question was blunt: if people can rally loudly around one young man convicted in a violent death, why does a weekend of mass grief in Chicago not create the same level of public urgency?…