A Story from Years Ago

 At around 4 p.m., perhaps thirty-five years ago, a man in early middle age sat in a booth in the Manoa Garden, a University of Hawaii campus bar, studying a chess game out of a book. A younger man, perhaps 25 or so, asked if he might follow along. They played through a few games and the older man invited the stranger to join him and his friends later that week, in their regular Friday night session with beer and a chess clock lock, loser stands. The trio of friends became a quartet. Sometimes Dave, a non-plater, joined the company. Once in a while Mae, a housemate and former girlfriend of the middle-aged man also sat in. Often, when the bar closed, the party would move to the house in the back of Manoa that Mae and the middle aged man shared, where, Saturday morning, the middle-aged man, an extreme lark, would find his friends asleep on the sofa or the carpet at 7 a.m. They would then go to a coffee shop and then to the beach or a hike along the coast between Koko Head and Makapuu Head or into the back of Manoa.

One day Dave, in the course of a friendly political discussion, said that his friends in the Revolutionary Communist Party had cautioned him against hanging out with that racist (the middle-aged man). That middle-aged man was me. I asked: "Against which race am I supposed to be biased?"
and Dave replied: "Every one but your own". I made no reply; the claim made no sense. Dave and I were the only haoles (White people, to Mainlanders) in our group. Mae was AJA, Chris was Chinese/Hawaiian/Haole, James was Chinese/Japanese, and Damon, whom I invited to join our group, was Afro-American. The communists might as well have said I was eight feet tall or morbidly obese. It's transparently false.

So why is "racist" the go-to slur? Perhaps because:  

Like Anita Hill's belated she said/he said sexual harassment accusation against Clarence Thomas and like Christine Margaret Blasey Ford's belated rape accusation against Brett Kavanaugh, racial bias accusations do not submit to easy proof or disproof, unless people who consider the matter know the accused personally.    

Defined by use, in modern American English, "racist" means "Caucasian who disagrees with a socialist". Imagined moral superiority provides a rewarding kick, like a hit of cocaine or heroin. 

Alao, real world complications do not taint the socialist vision. Just as distant mountains through clear air seem closer than when seen through haze, the socialist vision seems near when untainted by real world details. I suggest that devout socialists find the vision of socialist utopia so clear and rewarding that they can imagine no reason to oppose it. Only malice explains opposition to the socialist program, in the mind of the socialist faithful.     

People sometimes mistake "inevitable" for "imminent", for a related reason. If it's clear, it must be close. The inevitable expansion of the sun and incineration of Earth has no policy implications for today.