Just like sprinter Ben Johnson a quarter-century ago, Malcolm Subban was one of us before participating in an egregious Canadian sports failure.

It is stunning that in 2013, there are still people who do not realize it is wrong to make racial comments about an athlete after not getting the desired outcome of an event. Canadians are by and large accommodating and respectful of diversity. Funny thing, though, no one disparagingly brought up the white skin of the other 21 players on Team Canada after its lopsided 5-1 loss to Team USA that extended the country's world junior championship gold-medal drought to four seasons. Only Subban, the 19-year-old Belleville Bulls goalie whose parents came to Canada from the Caribbean, was so targeted.

Twitter is a great tool, but sometimes it's strewn with the digital equivalent of bathroom graffiti. Some Canadians — perhaps spoiled by recent success, perhaps thinking the gold medal was an entitlement — made just terrible comments about Malcolm Subban. As Morgan Campbell phrased it, you can presume the racially loaded vitriol came from Canadians because "who else would get this worked up about the World Junior Hockey Championship?"

Sensitivity forbids listing tweets that used a certain racial epithet, but it was bad enough without it. No one is implying hockey fans are racists. Far from it. It was one thing to turn on Subban, it's quite another to bring race into it.

@cournwaytwitty1 they need to put subban back in his monkey cage — Justin Loroff (@JustinLoroff) January 3, 2013

Subban is too black to win a gold medal for us anyways #imnotracist — Kyle(@AunntJemima) January 3, 2013

(If you have to use an "I'm not racist" hashtag, well...)

If we had of shot a banana at subban he would have stoped it #monkey #gobacktobelleville — Ryan shirley (@SHIRLS_08) January 3, 2013

I wish I could say subban was a victim of black on black crime but he only had 16 shots before getting the hook. — Bruce.Wayne (@THISisaWARMGUN) January 3, 2013

Black man subban does not come clutch!! — Jonathan Eng (@JonEng8) January 3, 2013

i guess we better throw Malcolm subban in the elite section of black goaltenders with Kevin weekes and ray emery — Tyler Kent (@Tkent8) January 3, 2013

Just came up with an awesome new nickname for Subban: The Black Hole — Stash (@rstashick) January 3, 2013

References to Subban's race did occur before Canada got hammered real good by the Americans. On Dec. 30, when Subban stoned Team USA defence star Seth Jones, who is African-American, people just had to make reference to each player's ethnicity. Why do that even when he was doing well?

Kay Malcom Subban's TRASH. fucking monkey — Cody Campos (@codycamposs) December 28, 2012

Subban just robbed Jones. That's Black on Black crime at its best — Matthew Harris (@MattyJHarris) December 30, 2012

It's brutal. No one should be singled out on the basis of race, least of all during a spots event. An irony here is this all went on in the same week Italian soccer club A.C. Milan and manager Massimo Ambrosini walked off the field during an exhibition match because midfielder Kevin-Prince Boateng had been hearing racial abuse from fans for the first 25 minutes.

Personally, even when there is nothing the least bit racial intended, it's something that might not be good to get into in Twitter's 140-character format. For instance, one Twitter user @mattomic made a mocking reference to the Toronto Sun tabloid and its parent corporation Quebecor Media, which are typically right-wing. There was no harm intended (as explained in a long Twitter exchange), but still, it racialized a public figure for no valid reason. Why do that and let other less enlightened people think it's OK to go there, especially when something could be misinterpreted?

Waiting for "BLACK-ON-BLACK SHOOTING" caption in the Sun for photo of Seth Jones taking a shot on Malcolm Subban — Matt English (@mattomic) December 30, 2012

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