“there’s no such thing as “hate speech” in America. Yet.”
Sure there is. Use a racial slur (or just have them accuse you of it) while in a confrontation with a ‘minority’ and see if your speech doesn’t turn it into a ‘hate crime.’ Bam, de facto hate speech.
As a courtesy I sent a copy of that note to the junior staffer who'd originally contacted me about the project. Two hours later I got irate e-mail from the boss, citing the online Merriam-Webster dictionary entry for "tar-baby" and informing me that the staffer I'd copied -- who was a recent hire, whom I'd spoken to on the phone but never met, and whose ethnic background had never crossed my mind, one way or the other -- was an African-American. And not only an African-American, but one who hadn't said a word to anyone about the offending term, such that the boss felt obliged to run hate-speech interference for her, concluding his note to me with a request not to write back: "In fact, it's better if you don't."
After composing a lengthy essay reviewing the historical, cultural, philological, political, and personal facets of the issue I decided he was right, and boiled the whole thing down to two sentences ("Dictionaries reflect the biases of the people who compile them" and "Political correctness will be the death of this country") that have been sitting, unsent, in my Drafts folder for the last five weeks. Needless to say, no other projects have been pitched to me in the interim.