The term "racist" has been tossed around so often and so frivolously that it has lost its effect as a true statement about bigotry.  If you're white and you haven't been called a racist, you're either afraid to disagree with blacks on any issue or you just have no contact with blacks in person or on social media — which, incidentally, probably means you're a racist.  For the purposes of this column, I'm going only address only what occurs during dialogue on social media.

Before I begin, I want to recall what Mike Tyson said, "Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it."  There's more than a bit of honesty in that statement because some people have a level of keyboard courage that they couldn't imagine having in a face-to-face confrontation.  Even if you left out the violent aspect of it, most people would decline to engage in a heated debate about race during a family gathering or a dinner party with friends.  However, once you sit in front of that computer, communicating from afar, you can figuratively take jabs at your opponents without fear of physical retaliation.  Hence, if you live in Maine and caustically disagree online with someone from the West Coast, you're unlikely to end up with a fat lip.

Nonetheless, you might get your reputation distorted and smeared by some fanatic sitting in a dark room, hovering over a dusty, beer-stained keyboard, pounding out a plethora of hate-filled accusations against your character, while his mother is yelling in the background for him to get a job.  Moreover, the cretin might find a way to use the internet to attack your employer for having such a "racist" in his company, thereby jeopardizing your employment.  Inasmuch as we've arrived at a time in our history in which being called a racist is tantamount to being labeled a child-molester.  It has become weaponized by the left as a way to control speech.

For example, if you're well versed in the politics of the day and articulate enough to make a good argument against the systemic racism myth, those who live prosperously off the long expired race card will view you as a threat to their bank account.  One of the tactics often used is to challenge you with, "Are you saying that racism doesn't exist?"  That's like the guy with a 5-pound ham under one arm and a loaf of bread under the other challenging you with, "Are you saying that hunger doesn't exist?"  Either question puts you on the defensive because it seeks an answer that is obvious while seeming to win the argument for the questioner.  The world has never been able to completely wipe out racism or hunger.  Nevertheless, the USA has done a better job with each than any country in history.  But don't expect that logic to placate the race-baiter, since his future is inextricably tied to the dividing of America.

I like what actor Morgan Freeman said during an interview with CNN's Don Lemon a few years ago.  "Do you think that race plays a part in wealth distribution or a mindset that you can't make it in America?" asked the left-wing commentator.  Freeman, without hesitation, responded, "Today?  No, I don't.  You and I, we're proof.  What would race have to do with it?  Put your mind to what you want to do and go for it."  Freeman is also quoted as saying, "If you want to end racism, stop talking about it."

The Academy Award–winning thespian's words from back then are not likely to get any awards from the Black Lives Matter or Antifa terrorists who can exist only if they force everyone not only to talk about race, but to submit to the threats of thugs who demand that whites admit to their bigotry or be beaten and killed on the streets of our cities.  Using a level of twisted reasoning that would make any sane person cringe, those violent louts, who raucously proclaim their fight against racism, will assault anyone they see with white skin.  Therefore, they are engaging in what they fraudulently declare they are against: racial stereotyping.

It's a tragic sort of irony that so many whites, who have fought for civil rights, free speech and other constitutional verities their entire lives, now find their reputations, if not their safety, being threatened whenever they try to exercise them.