First of all, who had “slaves” “first” is not relevant. What is relevant is how “race” is treated nowadays and which people are victims of racial prejudice. Now, according to the homework you gave me, both Romans and Arabs captured Slavic peoples, so that their enslavers could just as easily have been white people enslaving other white people. You and I both know that slavers and the enslaved tended to look alike, because people captured and enslaved those who were nearer to them, generally in tribal conflicts.

And, because there is more than one reasonable explanation for everything, here’s this:

Sclavus=Slave

This theory is, by far, the most popular. It is also the one that is the easiest to refute. There is some irrefutable logic behind this name. Thousands of Slavs were enslaved by Romans and Arabs. This, however, cannot define a nation, regardless of what some linguists claim.

This theory can be easily refuted by the fact that it’s historically impossible for the Slavs to be named by a Latin word. The first records of this name appeared around the sixth century in Byzantine records, and their historians were known to record the tribes they met in their travels using the name used by people themselves. The term used in those historical documents is “Sklavini”, written in Greek.

Even today some of the Slavic countries retain the names with the original root “slav”. This alone is proof enough that the name was invented by the people that lived in the region, instead of being borrowed from some other language.

Source: meettheslavs.com

Now that we’ve had our daily etymology fun, let’s stick to the main topic. The Comrade is either disingenuous or just wrong. Shalom and Salaam.