If it were written in 1961 it’d have said “Negro”.
That would be my suspicion as well. I would like to see other documentation from Hawaii from 1961 with “African” as the race.
"Kurt Tsue at the DOH told us that fathers race and mothers race are supplied by the parents, and that we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be. "
At the above-referenced site, there is a 1973 Hawaiian COLB where the fathers race is listed as American and the mothers as Hawaiian.
There is also a link to the 1962 instructions for the Kenyan census. Kenyans were instructed to identify their race as Write European, Arab, Somali, or African, etc. Asians must write Indian or Pakistan.
I didn’t see anywhere on the BC where it identified Obozo’s race/ethnicity. His father’s is identified as African, which makes sense, since he was born in Africa, not in the U.S. I’m thinking that his father would not have been identified as “Negro” because he was born in Africa.