(In this case I both have that empathy and also think it's a deeply unfortunate phrase that I wish we could leave behind, though I recognize the practical challenges of doing so.)
It isn't that the people are offended - it's that others are trying to get offended "on their behalf" as a form of virtue signalling. Also see most of the "cultural appropriation" movement. Where non-Japanese people get offended that other non-Japanese wear kimono while nearly every actual Japanese person I've seen on the issue expresses that they are fine and even fully supportive of foreigners wanting to wear kimono.
There's a difference between fighting for those without a voice and speaking on behalf of others who do not actually approve of what you are saying. Both can be a result of empathy - but it is important to recognize when you're doing the latter and when you're doing the former.
The number of black people I've seen who are offended that people would even think that they would take offense to the master/slave issue outnumbers the number of black people I've seen who think it is an issue to be fixed. Almost every individual I see calling to "fix" this issue is a white person speaking on "behalf" of black people.
Could it be that black people are put off by people fighting for their right to use words that have no significance for them, but need to remain just "on principle", and that they're put off by such behaviour, avoid the tech sector, and therefore aren't there to be visibly offended whenever you're looking?
To the point that she more than once have been in rage over white people accusing her (to her face) of being offensive to black people for saying something that they just assumed black people in general should find offensive.
She's also part of the diversity board of a major bank, where she sits on a panel that is mostly old white men talking about what issues affects their minorities and women, without a hint of recognition from any of them of the irony in that they've not recruited more minority representatives and women from their staff to be on the board itself.
Of course, if any of these people fighting on "behalf" of minorities actually had minority friends this would become self evident. The coddling and speaking on behalf of the minority is almost always more offensive to the minority then whatever non-problem the non-minority is tripping over.
Imagine how a woman would feel if she was told by a man to be more sympathetic towards other women on some specific issue, because clearly the man is better able to empathize with a women's problem than the woman herself who is trying to tell the man that it isn't actually an issue and that he's making a mountain out of a mole hill. He insists in his correctness and declares that she has internalized misogyny and that he is better qualified to speak on behalf of women than she is. Swap out "woman" with "person of color" and "man" with "white person" and it has a different result?
If you fail to see how that situation is offensive then I think you're the one with the empathy issue, because you aren't actually seeing from their point of view but how you imagine their point of view to be. I'd be bloody fucking pissed if a cis person tried to educate me on issues surrounding and within the LGBT community or told me I should be offended over something (eg: being called trans, something I call myself for fuck's sake) - and of course that's happened multiple times in the past.
But arguing over terminology used by a data store? Let's not discuss window dressing patterns while the neighborhood is burning to the ground.
Pick the hill you want to die on wisely. This is not that hill.
You say this, but it doesn't jive with your original comment. Choosing words and conduct carefully are the "low hanging" fruit in this world, they cost you nothing, but have material impact on the groups you are a part of.
Your comment reminds me of someone on a chat channel who had a nagbot that banned the word 'crazy' (amongst others). Why was 'crazy' banned? Because it might offend crazy people. Being one of those, and knowing people like that, absolutely no-one who would be labelled with the moniker 'crazy' would be offended by the word unless it was directed at them. The idea that a schizophrenic friend would be 'deeply hurt' if I said 'the traffic this afternoon was crazy' is utter nonsense. This forbidden word was forbidden by someone who clearly doesn't associate with the kind of people that were being defended.
And so it is when your black American engineer types the word 'slave', suggesting that their self-identity is so wrapped-up with the identity of a person that their grandparents grandparents barely knew, that they would find a non-directed under-the-bonnet technical term deeply hurtful. It's disturbing that you consider these people you're supposedly defending as being so incredibly emotionally fragile.
There was some interesting commentary in this thread about cultural appropriation and whatnot, which seems to me to be beside the point. My intent was only this: if there are other people rightly upset by something, it doesn't matter if you're not, it doesn't even matter if the majority are not, it's still valuable to have empathy for those those that are. That's all.
For instance, I don't expect others to act (i.e. should be forced to change) because something offends me.
Notes:
Don't confuse this question with me arguing that we shouldn't be empathetic.
I'm also not from the U.S. so my approach and offenses are different culturally than your own.