Strangely they had African in the first forgery, must be stuck with it, were they lying then or are they lying now. :)
I don’t see it as a big deal. BO Sr. wasn’t simply black like nearly all of the blacks in the country at the time, i.e., descendants of American slaves taken from western Africa, who spoke English and lived an American lifestyle. BO Sr.’s physical features were very different from most American blacks, he must have spoken English with a strong accent, and was known to be a transfer student from Africa. I can see a clerk making that distinction by stating “African,” even where the typical entry would have been Negro, black or whatever.
Someone gave a very logical explanation for the use of African on one of the other threads this morning. I’ve been trying to find it but can’t. Hawaii said they use whatever the parents tell them - there were several classifications for race that were in use in KENYA, and African was one of them. If that’s the way O Sr. self-identified it’s more than likely that’s what they were told and why they used it.