Part of what made it curious from the point of view of a historian of American slavery was the series of questionable assertions relative to that history, but I will pass on those at the present.

The main point to be made in response to this editorial is that the slave trade itself is today’s slave trade, not just in foreign countries but also in the United States.

Better known as human trafficking, this modern scourge victimizes (depending on one’s definition of slavery and subject to rough estimates given the underground nature of the activity) between 20 and 30 million people.

Recent U.S. State Department estimates place the number of people trafficked across international borders at between 800,000 and 900,000 per year.

Many experts reckon it is the second-leading form of organized crime in today’s world, second only to drug trafficking.

Sex trafficking is a leading form, but this slavery is alarmingly adaptive to various forms of economic exploitation.

The countries in which people are bought and sold in this brutal form of modern slavery include the United States of America.

Given these realities, it would be best for Ms. Openshaw and others to lay aside tendentious, stretchy analogies between various modern ills and past slavery.

Matthew Mason, Springville