Errr I think your former and your latter are the same thing......
And it gets overused. People are rather numb to it. It started with Obama. Unless you agreed with everything he said, did, or wanted to do, you were instantly labeled a racist by someone or the other on the interwebz. As an anti-DNC Green Party progressive I couldn't tell you how many times I have experienced this nonsense. I was even banned from an allegedly progressive site for criticizing the DNC from the left because that was perceived as me really being a conservative by the brain dead moderators (including r/progressive at reddit). The DNC in the US is a center right party by any global standard, but Lord forbid you call them out on sucking Wall Streets teets or other appendages. That, my friend, is racist here in the good old US of A.
The left is a totalitarian movement; it always has been.
Black folks don't like dogs, and k9's are a symbol of our racist heritage of police oppression. You are probably on their list.....
The word is not overused. The racist behavior is. And blacks like dogs.
They like pitbulls not K9 dogs and no it is overused, and often misused to the point it has no meaning.
I am black and we like all kinds of dogs. The word is not overused and it does carry meaning. I understand that whites like yourself want to try making everybody believe that, but the word will always carry significance. So if you want to make it irrelevant, end the behavior.
It may carry significance to you, but when you overuse it, has no meaning to the people falsely accused of it. How many times are democrats going to proclaim Anti-Muslim policies "racist" when there is no Muslim race? How many proclamations are the squad going to support about "racism" when Somalian, Puerto Rican, Mexican, et als are not races? Words have meaning. If you want to make accusations of racism relevant, learn to use them properly.