WE live in an age where kindness is usually mistaken for bigotry and where moral vigilance often slips into a kind of irrational fear of wrongdoing or worse: sheer paranoia.
An entire generation has been trained to scan words for hidden bias, to assume offence even when none exists.
When only interpretation matters, the result is a social landscape where words are potential hazards, cultural references are potential crimes and empathy has been replaced by constant suspicion.
It all began with a compliment. At a small gathering, a young woman was told she looked like an anime character — an observation based on an obvious fact — offered warmly by someone who adored Japanese animation. The girl laughed, flattered by the accurate, good-natured comparison and sensitive recognition.
But another guest overheard the remark, shook a finger and declared the comment racist and offensive.
The room fell silent, that awkward hush that these days follows whenever good intentions collide with affected hypersensitivity, one of the many hollow fads that insults intelligence and common sense on a daily basis.
It was as if the party had turned into a crime scene, and a moment of friendliness into a martial court of law where one of the guests was about to be treated like a war criminal.
Who was right? The kind person or the guest suddenly turned into an executioner holding an oversized glass of Chardonnay in one hand and a caviar canapé in the other?
Racism requires contempt, a sense of superiority, or the desire to diminish. Noticing someone’s charm, grace, or even playful resemblance to a cartoon is just noticing — they are human acts, not crimes. To label them otherwise is to confuse observation with oppression.
Racism exists and must be called out every time it rears its head. But not every remark that touches on a person’s distinctive characteristics — be it skin colour or eyes shape — is a moral failing.
When someone praises another’s appearance, mannerisms or style, they are engaging in the simplest of human acts: acknowledgment of beauty, charm or character. To claim otherwise is to punish goodwill.
Regrettably, totalitarian collectivism is as strong as ever these days. State, school, media and academia train people to behave in a similar way and to assume offence before context.
Intent is dismissed, tone is ignored. Words are scanned for imagined prejudice. The result? Ordinary human interaction becomes a minefield. Empathy is replaced with disbelief.
What makes this new moralism so insidious is its elegance: it dresses censorship in the language of care.
It claims to protect feelings while quietly policing thought. A compliment becomes a confession, and speech itself a liability.
The fear of saying the wrong thing now outweighs the desire to say anything at all. In defending against imaginary harm, we have begun to wound something real — the freedom to speak without fear and skittishness.
That is where we are now: in an environment where language, a tool that is supposed to make people autonomous, must tiptoe, and warmth is treated as evidence.
The tragedy is not the quarrel itself, but what it reveals — that trust between speaker and listener has quietly dissolved, replaced by the cold comfort of moral surveillance. The conversation never ends, it simply retreats into silence.
Accusing someone of racism for merely making a positive comparison is a way to condemn and persecute the different, the person who dares to be an individual rather than a castrated robot in uniform.
