Man, I can recognise a pattern without being racist. I could have gone further and said exclusively white men. That wouldn't have been sexist, just true. There were only four of you thankfully.

If I wasn't well aware that the vast majority of white people are beyond this kind of nitpicking I'd have lost all optimism for the future of race relations a long time ago. I just can't understand the mentality of somebody who needs to offer this worthless little addendum.

Maybe, you could realise that a black person mentioning slavery isn't a competition. Do you feel the need to mention Pearl Harbour whenever somebody mentions Hiroshima? Stalin every time somebody mentions Hitler? Hockey everytime somebody mentions basketball? (Don't say I don't understand Canadian culture.)

The reason I find this irritating is the defensiveness it implies. This 1500 word article mentions the word "slave" twice. That's it. Slavery isn't even close to being the theme of the article. Yet four people, all of whom just so happened to be white men, honed in on that word and rushed to the comments to point out that "but, but, wHiTe PeOpLe WeRe SlAvEs ToO!!"

I'm not attacking you or white people in general by pointing out a historical fact. I'm not ignoring history by talking about the origins of a word which is rooted specifically in the Atlantic slave trade and gains its power from that time. I'm not saying that black people are the only people in history who have ever been mistreated or that they're incapable of mistreating anybody else.

I could add this disclaimer every single time I mention slavery, or I could assume that my readers have the sense to understand context.