Tried that, and got re-directed to the appeal form. The one where you have 200 characters to explain why you didn't do what they accused you of,

I would doubt that it's a mistake. A lot of reddit admins make it clear they support leftist causes, and this was a thread about Affirmative Action. Also, at the time I was banned, that was a 6-day old post in a private subreddit. And I had been recently downvoted and banned from a default sub. I appealed several times and each time just got the standard "We investigated, and you're still banned" response. Also, they over-wrote my original comment with "\[ Removed by Reddit \]" (the original doesn't even show up via RevEddit) so there's basically no way I can actually show that my response wasn't hateful. At this point they just could say "It's hateful because we said so." Also - After denying my appeal, the admins changed the reason of me getting banned from "promoting hate" to "multiple, repeated violations". I guess even trying to appeal somehow constituted another violation.

I appealed and got rejected with a canned reply. I'm not sure that anyone actually read my reply. I'm sure it was a power-tripping admin since it was made in a private subreddit, and I was banned right after being massively downvoted on a default sub.