It’s not that we Americans don’t know about slavery in Ancient Rome or Northern Africa, it’s that we don’t care. We live in a Democracy, not an autocracy, which “permits” slavery because it is one person rule. America has a promise to keep: reflect the democracy and the inalienable right of every human. That’s one reason why slavery in America is more important. Another is that may be insulting to black Americans to say “Slavery was every across history, so shut up” or to white Americans like me who believe they have a right to be offended by this attitude of minimizing slavery in front of their face and blaming “Wokism” which allows people on the right the use this argument now to silence and demean black Americans. It’s just another way right wingers (in practice if not in the party) to find a way to publicly degrade black people and get away with it.
The right-wing use of Woke is derived from Hitler’s slogan Deutschland Erwache *Germany wake up) and from US supremacists use of American wake up blacks will bred with your women and obliterate your race, as seen in Georgia’s Women’s World in the 1930s by notable supremacist author Mrs. Andrews: “White People! We again be you to wake up before your heritage and your race are obliterated.” Back in the 1930s and 40s most most southern white politicians actually called themselves white supremacists, not they have to find clever ways to keep signaling it.