There's some of that. But it results from PC indoctrination, legislation and intimidation, to use the rhyming style of Jesse Jackson.
A generation of kids has been given PC indoctrination in schools (consider the "speech codes" in colleges, etc.) and we've all been subjected to media and peer-group PC-indoctrination. I'm an old guy and I'd never heard the words "hate crime" before the 1980s, but now, thanks to gutless-brainless legislators, non-PC speech (and thought, presumably!) can have serious real-world consequences. That's especially true given outfits like the Southern Poverty Law Center, "civil rights" lawyers and many angry partisan and vindictive judges in the country's courts. Fear of devastating punitive legal consequences is what keeps all us sheeple penned-up inside the PC electric fence.
Free speech? A feel-good fairy tale we keep repeating, but it's a fantasy. Real free speech (for everyone, that is, not just the Left) hasn't existed since before the 1960s. I agree with the Reverend that it's going to take a lot of courage to reverse this oppression. But who'll be the first wave out of the trench?
I've known Jesse for many years. When I first knew him, in 1992, he held his first news conference. I remember. NO ONE
WAS TALKING ABOUT JESSE JACKSON, OR MAXINE WATERS OR THEM...but Jesse, with his little band of Bond members (And I mean little) started speaking up. He looked for ways to get his message out, going on talk shows, struggling to get newspapers to write a story about him or BOND so he could spread his message. He spoke anywhere he was asked, even it it were only 2 people. I worked for BOND at one point and remember when Jesse went to the city council about something and no one on his side of the issue got attention from the media except Jesse, because he deliberately made a big noisy, totally politically incorrect fuss!! He got in the paper and the rest of the 'proper' supporters on the same side didn't. Don't try to tell him there's nothing you can do!