My 87-year-old buddy plays handball twice a week with three other octogenarians.  Their YMCA has two handball courts, one of which is preferred because the lighting is better.  One day, the senior athletes arrived at the Y only to discover four black women doing their stretching workout on the good handball court.

The men, all of whom are white, politely asked the women if they wouldn't mind doing their exercises on the other court so the men could play ball on the court with decent lighting.  The women agreed and moved to the other court.

Five minutes later, a member of the YMCA staff informed the handball players that they would have to relinquish their court to the women.  Then the staff member lowered the boom.  The women had claimed the men had used the N-word.  Horror of horrors!  Send in the Marines.

The men categorically denied the charge.  It didn't matter.  The staff member refused to accept the men's denial.  The mere accusation by four lying women was sufficient to establish that the men were racists.  The women were not challenged because convicting a white person of racism without proof is part of the liberal playbook.

Welcome to the left's new rule for establishing culpability: a mere allegation of racism is sufficient to convict.  Say goodbye to the bulwark of our legal system.  If you are white, you are guilty of racism until proven innocent.

"Yesterday's race baiters were brutal white bullies," said author Ben Shapiro.  "Today's are left-wingers invoking fictional white racism to achieve their goals."

Cut to the present.  I had the temerity to write a book entitled The War on Whites: How Hating White People Became the New National Sport.  My thesis is that while blacks traditionally have been the objects of racism, the tables have turned, and now whites are being demonized, marginalized, stereotyped, denigrated, and suppressed at every turn.

Critical Race Theory argues that all white people are evil oppressors of blacks and other minorities.  Diversity trainings are demanding that white employees should "undo their whiteness" and "be less white."  Many companies are forcing White employees to admit that "all whites are racist, and I am not the exception."  Schools around the country are telling white students as young as five and six that they should apologize for their skin color.

Trashing whites is the modus operandi of the Democrat party.  Showing contempt for a half-century of enlightened racial tolerance, Democrats — with the support of academia and the media — are trying to divide America along racial lines.  As explained by Colin Flaherty in Don't Make the Black Kids Angry, the biggest lie of our generation is "the war on black people and how racist white people are waging it."

Response to The War on Whites has fallen into two categories.  First are those who applaud my courage in writing the book.  "Brodow says what we are all thinking," said one reviewer.  "White people are sick and tired of being bashed and trashed all over the place."  Another reviewer wrote, "Finally an established commentator has detailed what most of us have realized but been afraid to discuss.  The media, Hollywood, Washington, academia, and many other once revered institutions have brainwashed themselves that the white race is evil."

The second group has accused me of being a white supremacist and compared me to Hitler.  "[He is] trying to find someone to blame for his perceived failures in life or perhaps he is just as racist as he claims others are," one person wrote.  "What you are saying is probably your fantasies cause it's definitely not the truth," said another angry reviewer.  "This is some mess you made up."  And more: "Poor little white boy" and "I see the smirk on your face."  And this gem: "He attempts to cite his racially pejorative views as proof that other people are racist."

None of the angry people in the second group attempts to offer conflicting arguments.  All of their attacks are ad hominem — directed at me instead of my position.  My ideas should be ignored because I am an evil racist.

At no time have I attempted to diminish the impact on blacks of slavery and Jim Crow.  My position, clearly stated, is that any kind of discrimination is unacceptable, whether aimed at blacks, whites, or any other group.  When I claim that white people are the objects of racism, how does that make me a Klan member?  It fascinates me that some people think that wanting to defend white people from discrimination makes me a racist.  I don't get the connection.

It doesn't matter.  Calling someone a racist is just too easy.

Ed Brodow (www.edbrodowpolitics.com) is a conservative political commentator and author of ten books, including his latest, THE WAR ON WHITES: How Hating White People Became the New National Sport.

Image: Fibonacci Blue.