If you are accused of racism, it is because you are a racist. Case closed. Apologize at once and cease being so hateful. That is the current standard in woke academic thinking on race relations.

Salem State University professor Rebecca Hains says as much in a ­recent essay in The Washington Post, where she offers detailed instructions to white people who find themselves charged with racism. Nowhere in her five-step response plan does she permit the possibility that an accusation of racism could be unfounded. “Even if you know in your heart that you are not racist,” she wrote, “remember, it is possible to have implicit (or unconscious) racial biases.”

When the Unconscious Police pull you over, you must “recognize that what matters most is what happened just now.” Neither past actions nor associations count in your favor. Forget about, say, a personal history of fighting bigotry. Your inner beliefs against racism also count for zilch. The present charge is all the evidence needed to convict. Suck it up and move on to step two.

Step two: “Remember the broader context.” Hains explains: “The United States was built on the enslavement of black people, and some forms of structural racism persist in our laws and culture. If you grew up in the United States, you were socialized within this system.”

You’re guilty by reason of being American. Deal with it.

Step three: “Stay calm and ask for clarification.” You are supposed to “apologize and consider asking someone . . . for help understanding what went wrong.” Note that Hains doesn’t say you should apologize if you recognize your error. No, you should apologize if you are accused.

From whom should you ask for clarification? “If possible, ask a white person. It isn’t the job of people of color to educate white people, and you are not owed a direct explanation, as much as you might like one. Don’t be entitled.”

Seeking out a white person instead of engaging someone of another race as a thinking human being capable of explaining his or her own thinking? Isn’t that, um, racist?

Step four is to “really listen” to the (preferably) white person who is now explaining what you did wrong. And step five is to “express gratitude” to that person, “work to identify and overcome your harmful implicit biases and help raise your fellow white people’s consciousness.”

This is a five-step plan for becoming a self-segregated imbecile. It is insulting to African Americans because it reduces the horror of racism to a possibly invisible ­social faux pas, to be corrected like bad manners. It is insulting to white Americans because it assumes that they are all latent racists.

It is insulting to the project of a multi-ethnic United States, ­because it blatantly endorses social division along racial lines. And it is an insult to justice, because it forecloses the very possibility of innocence. Only a university professor could hatch something so comprehensively wrongheaded.

And it is all phony. Hains reassures those who are called racist, “you’re not on trial.” Her suggestions, rather, are aimed at “understanding what went wrong.” That sounds nice enough, but, in truth, charges of racism are usually intended to smear and, with a little luck, destroy the accused.

For example, only days after Hains’ article appeared, the same section of The Washington Post ran an article by Marissa Brostoff insinuating without evidence that conservative author J.D. Vance was a racist. Brostoff implied that when Vance expressed concern for declining American birthrates, he was actually upset about white America’s inability to produce white babies at replacement levels.

Perhaps no one had told Brostoff that Vance himself is the father of a biracial child. Readers cried foul on Twitter, and the Post edited out the smear and ran a correction. The attempted character ­assassination was thwarted.

Thus, unintentionally, The Washington Post demonstrated how to handle unjust allegations. It involves only one step, ­requires no false admissions of guilt and excludes no race from the conversation. If the charge is false, fight back until it is ­retracted.

Not that the paper’s opinion editors learned the lesson: A few days later, they published another piece insinuating that a whole host of mainstream commentators are actually crypto-Confederates. The moronism would be hilarious if it weren’t so sinister.

Abe Greenwald is senior editor of Commentary. Twitter: @AbeGreenwald