In the spirit of what you are saying I agree. Yet this can be taken too far.
In the U.S. people can choose to be offended by almost anything. They can then make laws against offending people. People can be jailed, fined, lose their jobs, lose their banking, etc. Simply because someone was offended.
Considering people can choose to be offended by anything and it is a CHOICE this is a very dangerous thing to create laws and actions around.
I tell people when a bird flies over and defecates and it hits your shoulder you are likely momentarily offended. Then you move on. This is part of being mature.
While we shouldn't go out of our way to intentionally say things to hurt people, we shouldn't have to constantly be concerned with whether someone might become offended by something we say.
Determining intention requires mind reading. If I say something with no racist intent yet someone decides it was racist. That choice to assume it was racist happened in their head, not mine. Thus, I was not being racist. They chose to assume racism was my motive.
So again. I agree we should not say things to intentionally hurt people.
We just need to be VERY careful how far we take that.
Well said...Thanks for the comment