One of the interesting things about Obama's birth certificate is the designation "African" for the race of Obama Sr. Obama's birth certificate declares that Obama's father's race is "African" and his mother's as "Caucasian". I was kind of surprised that the "race" of the child was not noted but since I haven't seen birth certificates from that time I'll suppose they didn't keep that kind of records (at least in Hawaii).
It got me to thinking of a story that I believe Malcolm X would tell about an African diplomat going to a segregated restaurant and getting to sit in the white section because he "was not a Negro". Apparently the distinguishing feature being the head wrap this diplomat wore. But the certificate does shed a bit of light on the craziness of the American racial classification system. How is Obama's father NOT a Negro? Strictly speaking, Negro is spanish for black and is a reference to any African person with the features of Obama Sr. Did the American social system believe that there was a Negro race and also an African race? If so how exactly did that work? What was the science behind it? At what point did a person stop being an African and start being a Negro? Is it possible to be a Half Negro and Half African?
A cursory glance at American history shows that Africans themselves in Early America thought of themselves as Africans. Evidence being the African-Methodist Episcopal churches, The various "African Lodges" and other community organizations which often prominently announced their African origins. Even Africans who had immersed themselves in English society still considered themselves "African".
If the case was that Obama Sr's nation of birth was the deciding factor, why not designate him a "Kenyan"? It would be interesting to see how black people from the Caribbean were labelled on birth certificates. Strictly speaking they couldn't be "American Negroes" and they couldn't be "Africans" so exactly what racial designation would they have been given? Of course the very fact that one can read the title "American Negro" is testament to the idea that Negro really wasn't a special designation for Slave Trade Africans on the North American continent(tm).
Of course we are also left to ask this question: If Obama Sr. had married a down south woman with no known white ancestry and had a child with her, how would the birth certificate had read? African and Negro? And we would have to ask that given the child would be indistinguishable from two "American Negroes" with no known white ancestors, why should Obama Sr. be designated African and the hypothetical mother not be? Genetically they would both be Africans. By ancestry they would both be Africans. Furthermore, since that child would be indistinguishable from two "Africans" the same question applies: Would that child be considered African or Negro?
All of this to say that it is clear that the historical and current American social system of race makes no sense whatsoever and is really about designating and protecting whiteness (One Drop Rulism) than it is about phylogeny.
(17 years of informed commentary)
