Kurt Tsue, a public relations officer for the Hawaii Department of Health answered this question almost a year ago. In 1961, Hawaii allowed the parents of a newborn to choose their own racial designation. Hawaii has always been the most multiracial state and its often difficult to assume a race from just looking at a person.
The following is from factcheck.org’s article on the Obama birth certificate: “Update, August 26: We received responses to some of our questions from the Hawaii Department of Health. They couldn’t tell us anything about their security paper, but they did answer another frequently-raised question: why is Obama’s father’s race listed as “African”? Kurt Tsue at the DOH told us that father’s race and mother’s race are supplied by the parents, and that ‘we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be.’ We consider it reasonable to believe that Barack Obama, Sr., would have thought of and reported himself as “African.” It’s certainly not the slam dunk some readers have made it out to be.
The word “African” was chosen by Barack Obama Senior. It is still typical today for Black Africans to not use the word “Negro”, or any other American racial identifier, even “Black” to describe themselves.
Even in 2009 Africans often identify with a nation or a tribal group not a race.
There’s nothing to see here, move along now.
So we should think that the Doctor and Nurse filling out the BC paperwork instead let the father fill in the section marked RACE with a designation that was technically incorrect? By this token the Caucasian designation would have been marked WHITE? This might very well happen nowdays, with all the dumbdown PC publik skool edicashun.
Reality is that the Nurse takes down the pertenient information and later fills in the blanks. Yes the father could have claimed AFRICAN, but certainly in 1961 this would not have been considered RACE and the person charged with completing the form would have marked NEGRO or NEGROID.