Penal labor and slavery are two very different things, and confusing them doesn't make any sense. Both have nothing to do with free speech - it looks like you're just grasping for arguments to say "US is bad". What's the point?

> applying an ounce of critical theory shows how the laws can be enforced along racial lines.

Laws certainly can be applied in a racist way - though you don't need any "critical theory" (which in most instances is a bunch of insane pseudo-scientific drivel anyway) to know that. Of course people can be racist and apply laws in racist ways, and there should be safeguards against that, as against any other abuse of law for purposes the law is not intended for. There's no contradiction with free speech.

> Note that no one actually suggested this as the solution.

That's patently false - a REAL LOT of people - including prominent politicians (lately one Hillary Clinton, for example), business tycoons, CEOs and C* of major companies, prominent press and culture figures, professors and government functionaries - are suggesting exactly that as a solution. And not just suggesting - implementing. Thorough and comprehensive speech suppression and censorship, in the name of correcting some past wrongs and preventing some future ones, real or invented. It is not ever about equal enforcement - nobody objects to equal enforcement of laws, but the solution they are pushing is not equality, it's censorship and suppression.

> the first reaction is always, "So instead you want to oppress and censor me??"

Because they DO want to oppress and censor me, and they are not hiding it either - they are saying it openly and boldly. They call for censorship and speech suppression all the time - and not only calling for it, they has been doing it for years, with much success and they aren't going to stop. It's not something I imagine might be happening in some distant future, it's something that has been already happening for decades. All major social media platforms are strictly censored now, all academia research is censored now, all mainstream news and entertainment is censored right now. The only reason the government is not censoring directly is the First Amendment does not let them, but they work around it by just asking their operatives in Big Tech to do it for them, and those are glad to oblige. Most of the political, academia, big tech, entertainment and press establishment are 100% in on censorship. There are some resistance to it, but those are outside mainstream, the mainstream is all censorship, all the time, and more of it.

> The best explanation I've seen of this phenomenon is that when someone has lived in an privileged and elevated position for their whole life, any calls for equity seem like an attack on your position.

That's one of the example of insane drivel I referred to above. Every time some argument is challenged, the response is "oh, you're just saying that because your privilege is attacked". You know nothing about me, you know nothing about my experience, your argument contradicts basic facts and makes no logical sense - but all that is irrelevant, because you always have this mega-argument - just say "privileged" and everything you say is automatically right and everything the "privileged" say is automatically wrong, no logic or connection to facts is needed.

> maybe we should be structuring things so they're not oppressing anyone.

Yeah, maybe we shouldn't have censorship, for example? Try to convince somebody in Big Tech of that... So far I see not much progress on this.