In 2006, Michael Richards was very angry when he was continuously heckled while he was on stage doing a stand-up comedy show. Richards, unsure of what to do, began doing what some comedians do when they feel up against the wall. They immediately go to shock value. Richards began throwing around the “n-word” as a way to try to get cheap shock-laughs while freaking out on some hecklers and was labeled a racist for it. The hecklers were black, making Richards’ screaming of the “n-word” a racist act, and fair enough.

Richards has had the label of “racist” attached to him ever since. Thing is, I’m not exactly sure that Richards could be considered a racist. He committed a racist act, to be sure, but in subsequent interviews spanning years, I can only conclude that the guy isn’t actually harboring animosity toward people of different skin color. He was just a bad stand-up comedian who had a moment of panic-induced rage that made him cross a societal line in an attempt to gain footing.

It happens to comedians all the time in varying levels. It recently happened to Whoopie Goldberg. It doesn’t make what Richards did right, but it does offer us context, and context is exactly what seems to be thrown out in almost every accusation of racism nowadays.

As I wrote earlier on Wednesday, Tim Allen topped trending lists on Twitter because of accusations of racism being thrown at him. Why is he racist? Because he doesn’t know how to play spades, and six years ago he tried to reason that saying the “n-word” in a specific context should be allowed if the context has zero racist connotations.

Years of the “n-word” being used by all sorts of people proved Allen correct. One shining example is Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park making an entire episode centered around the Richards incident where they used the “n-word” openly many times. There was little to no blowback over it. Stone and Parker even made the argument in the South Park episode that Richards wasn’t racist, he was just a bad comedian. Richards himself has made that observation.

Here we see four white men using the “n-word” in various contexts, and yet none of them actually are racist when nuances are considered.

Yet context and nuance are given no quarter in today’s social justice infested society.

People are labeled “racist” left and right for simply opposing a person of color in any way regardless of the subject. I was recently labeled a racist for pointing out that twerking on cop cars and sticking your butt out at a camera at a Pride parade does nothing to help acceptance or tolerance of LGBT peoples.

The people in the video and pictures just happened to be black, but being black wasn’t the issue. It didn’t matter. I opposed something black people happened to be doing.

But you don’t even have to be doing anything to necessarily be labeled as racist. Are you a white Republican? You’re a racist? Are you a doctor or a nurse? Kamala Harris thinks you’re a racist. Did you vote for Trump? Clinton thinks you’re a racist. Are you a Hispanic woman wearing a MAGA hat? A white SJW will be along shortly to label you as racist. According to the activist left, Veggie Tales is racist too. Oh, and Lord of the Rings also causes racism to magically appear in people.

Most recently, Steven Crowder was labeled as a racist for daring to call Vox’s Carlos Maza a Mexican, which he is, and is something Carlos Maza proudly calls himself.

What isn’t racist? Anything that the left does.

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace claimed there wasn’t a “strain of racism” on the left. Yet leftists activists and politicians embrace rabid antisemites like Nation of Islam hate preacher Louis Farrakhan, who think Hitler was a great man and that Jewish people are termites. CNN’s Don Lemon called white men the number one threat to America. Leftist “comedian” Kristine Wong made a YouTube show that openly teaches kids racism against white people.

Even Virginia governors doing blackface seem only elicit a finite outrage from racially obsessed activists.

The word “racism” is no longer a description, and hasn’t been for some time. Now it’s simply a political tool with no meaning. The word doesn’t need context to be used, and you need not worry about dissecting nuance in order to toss it around. Just find something you don’t like and apply liberally. No pun intended.

This isn’t good for obvious reasons. For one, any actual racism gets lost in the minutia. We also lose sight of what actual racism looks like, and soon actual racism gets pardoned as reactive defensiveness against another race over accusations of racism that never happened. We clown ourselves and call it “being woke.”

This is why the word is losing its edge. People having the accusation of racism nowadays are more likely to laugh it off than actually go through the time-wasting process of proving they aren’t. Why should they? The vast majority of people accused of racism did nothing racist at all and have nothing to answer for.

What’s more, the general public isn’t asking them to answer for it either. The only people stomping their feet and demanding a pound of flesh are the mainstream media, politicians, and activists, and they’re losing the public’s ear thanks to overuse of the accusation.

The word “racism” just doesn’t mean anything now, and the left has only itself to blame.