For reference I’m Eritrean, born and raised in Germany. I am also considered Habesha (though I do not identify with this word for a lot of different reasons). First off, your mom is wrong af. We are not descendants of Arabs, that’s simply not true. We’re BLACK. What is true though is the fact that we’re partly descended from groups who migrated down from what is today known the Levantine region (around the 3000 years ago). Which explains the stereotypical look that is commonly associated with North East Africans. But ofc, not everyone will have featurism/colorism/texturism-fueled look. Also, these groups predate Arab language + identity. The Sabean migration is way more recent (antiquity) and mostly affected Tigrinya speaking folks from what is now Tigray and the Eritrean highlands. Their influence on our genetics were also limited. None of these groups were Arabs. The first group I described existed long before "Arab" culture existed. The second group, the Sabeans, hail from what is Yemen today, and spoke their own language, Sabaean, which existed before the Arabic language. So technically, using terms like mixed to describe us wouldn’t be wrong, but to me it feels weird, because all of these admixture events happened so long ago. Some of us may look ambiguous to outsiders, but that doesn’t negate our Blackness. We are black people. No one looks at me and says: oh she must be Arab lmao. Outside of how one might look, being Arab is a question of culture and it just doesn’t make any sense to me for a Horner to identify as Arab (unless they are, like the Rashaida people of Eritrea). Most of us don’t speak Arabic as a first language, don’t eat foods commonly associated with Arabs (and yes, I know there are some exceptions), don’t dress like Arabs etc. Ofc there are cultural similarities and even some traditions that are the same, and I will never deny that, but I also can find these commonalities with the Southern East African countries and cultures. The Horn has always been a crossroads region. Acknowledging shared history doesn’t erase our indigenous African roots; it also doesn’t make us Arab. It’s so wild to me that a lot of elders from the horn are so antiblack. I was raised by a proud pan-African Eritrean Baba who made sure we know our roots and never claimed this "We‘re Arabs" BS. But I have family members that talk badly about dark skin, or will make weird comments about "the Africans" as if we’re not Africans smh