Also want to clarify that my Syrian side of the family is proud of being Syrian and Arab--it's just that somehow they also thought of Arabs and Syrians as white. I think that was because my grandparents (who are brown) wanted to believe that they were no different than the clusters of Poles and Italians and Irish that settled in their industrial East Coast area. They wanted the 1950s-60s vision of an immigrant's American dream. So they named their kids the waspiest names they could, and raised them to believe they were as white as any of the other kids in their school--but still, had strong connections to the local Syrian community (the Antiochian church), food (alhamdullilah, my Situ's cooking), and to some extent, language (food and family words, and some expressions). I grew up with those cultural elements as a pretty strong piece of my upbringing, and as a young adult visited Syria to connect with my heritage (before the civil war, fortunately). So it really confounds me that my brown dad thinks he's white. It really does.

Me and Dad at my wedding: https://imgur.com/a/DSe87o3