Discussion about Sudanese people eh? Let me slide right into this. Before I start I want to say I will not be disclosing my specific Sudanese Ethnicity for my own personal reasons and beliefs one of them being how in Sudanese society one's tribe is often asked upon in casual conversation and it leads people to form prejudices and negative opinions on someone simply based on that piece of information. I've honestly in the past also had my opinions and viewpoints on certain Sudanese discussions entirely discredited simply due to me making the mistake of mentioning my ethnicity. It's something that has fueled tribalism greatly in Sudan and I am all against this degeneracy of obsessing so much over one's ethnic origin so as a result, I make it a strict rule for myself to not discuss my tribal lineage/ethnic background regardless of if I'm online or in-person to avoid blatant tribalism from Sudanese people I speak to and because I just don't believe it's important. So if you are looking for a more personal answer I can try but I won't be able to really do that without exposing too much about myself but I will give you the basic facts, what I've observed and how it all breaks down into the whole Arab Identity crisis in Sudan today.
"Sudanese people look like other Africans how can they be Arab?"
While the first half of this statement is undeniably true (with the exclusion of some Sudanese people), being Arab has nothing to do with ones appearance. It is very clear from my Sudanese experience, appearance does however play a role in how easily you are accepted as "Arab" by other Arabs. I myself have found despite me speaking better Arabic (but not reading very well lol) than some Arabs they still have always seen me as some sort of "Fake-Arab" or "Outsider". I've even had Arabs directly tell me that Sudanese people aren't "Real Arabs" whereas others have been more cut-throat and straightforwardly racist. Appearance definitely does play a role in acceptance otherwise countless Sudanese people would not be called numerous racial slurs (specifically targeted towards black people) by Arabs. But appearance is only really limited to how Arabs really perceive you and how easily they welcome you and accept you. In some instances, a Sudanese person could possibly have more Arab blood than a Tunisian but in the eyes of a racist Saudi man, he is most likely going to be much more respectful and welcoming creating a spirit of Arab Brotherhood towards the Tunisian man for the obvious reasons that the Sudanese man is very different in appearance to the former two and is, therefore associated to Black Africans due to his appearance and his Arab card is pretty much revoked by some individuals for this very reason. But who's to say a Sudanese person isn't Arab just because some Saudi dude doesn't like his skin color or hair texture? As various there are interpretations and understandings of what makes someone Arab, none of them seem to initiate an explicit focus on physical appearance or anything merely along the lines of phenotype. And in this regard, Sudanese people looking like Black Africans is totally irrelevant when pondering "Why do Sudanese people claim Arabs?". Personally, I am against Sudan trying to tie itself with Arabs and I am in favour of a culturally and politically autonomous future separate from Arabs only maintaining ties with our Age-old allies, the Egyptians but I'm just being honest here, this isn't good counter to Sudanese people regarding themselves as Arab and I don't even want Sudanese people to be calling themselves that.
"Sudanese people have been Arabized so why do so many Indigenous languages still exist?"
The process of Arabization has been especially significant in Africa and the state of North Africa is living evidence of that. The extent to which Berber languages for example have been reduced shows how rapidly the expansion of the Arabic language and cultural identity occurred and it also shows the utter expanse to which it reached. However, I think this is more common sense than it is deeper knowledge. Arab culture sure was influential but North Africa, Sudan included are very vast areas of land in comparison to smaller regions like the Levant which Arabs were capable of completely assimilating and influencing to the point of most indigenous languages being wiped out and a couple of isolated languages in neighboring regions being the only remnants of the prior age. To cut to the chase, Sudan is large and very diverse given its history and geography, it has allowed for various cultures and languages to be created along with numerous civilizations being created that contributed to further diversifying the land on both linguistic and cultural grounds. It is no surprise that the process of Arabization in Sudan didn't go very far but then again 70% of the country identifying as Arab is still a considerably large fraction of the country depending on how you want to look at it. This is also paired with how Sudan (to my current knowledge) was one of the only nations in the Arab world that brandished the Arab identity without having to suffer any sort of external military conquest. It all happened with slow gradual migration, trade, and internal influences, with no external military conquest involved at all. Arabs attempted military conquest into Sudan seeing as it was the gateway into Sub-Saharan Africa and possibly provided an opportunity for conquering the prosperous lands of Ethiopia but they failed on both attempts in Nubia.
All the factors above show why Sudan unlike other Arab nations still retains so much of its indigenous Pre-Arab heritage and why the myth that Sudanese Arabs are purely "invaders/settlers" also holds not much truth to it.
It's also important to mention that while many Sudanese ethnic groups still have an indigenous language that they speak, culturally many of these tribes are still very Arab-oriented. Nubians and Beja being a perfect examples of this, they both speak indigenous languages but their culture is massively influenced by Arab culture and shares many similarities. Unfortunately, indigenous languages are on the decline and some have gone extinct as recently as the 70s. I pray for when we as Sudanese people can realize the importance of our true and original heritage and uplift and teach the original languages of our land, Inshallah.
As for Genetics, I will tackle that separately.
