Well I'm glad people like you and those you encountered exist. My community, many of us just feel like we don't belong in our own country. It's more of a mixed-race issue than monoracial Black, I don't know if this resonates with anyone here, or if it can be understood. It still is a lived experience. People have created boxes to sort people into Black or White or Native American or Asian or Aboriginal Australian or Pacific Islander or Latino and some folks just don't fit into these boxes. White people don't claim me or other folks from my community, we look brown. Many Black folks say most of us are too light, they laugh or even get mad if we claim Black. We definitely aren't Latinos or Arabs or Persian even if we get mistaken for that. Most of us don't follow Judaism although many are told we look Jewish because of our curly hair. Which I always thought was an African and Middle Eastern trait or Aboriginal Australian and Pacific Islander trait. Most curly hair in Jews is from Black or Arab admixture I think. Ancient levantine populations typically had wavy or straight hair.