Be advised that all over Africa (which is not an "African" concept BTW) various tribes consider themselves superior to their neighbors on the basis of differences in skin color and facial features; differences that are often completely indiscernible by Europeans.
Take Obama Sr.'s tribe, the LUO. They were the Arab's go-to guys in the East African slave trade for hundreds years. They were the tribe that went into the bush to capture slaves for the Muslims. The trade was not suppressed until the years just before WWI, and it was one of the main given reasons for the British Empire officially seizing Kenya in 1905. In fact, the slave trade has never been completely suppressed. Given the commercial relations between the LUO and the Arabs, who in Africa are not a precise racially defined group themselves, there was frequent intermarriage. BTW, many LUO are now Christians. If Aunt Zeituni is a Christian, she would probably actually be a refugee, because there is very bad juju betweren Raila Odinga's jihadists and the Christians in Kenya. His people massacred thousands of Christians.
However, no old African hand is going to mistake a Luo for an Arab. Barack Senior was a pretty typical Kenyan LUO tribesman. He was quite black, did not have the "Nilotic" features of some of the Somali or Ethiopian tribes, was not a Masai, or Watusi, or Dinka, or Kikuyu. He was a Luo. A "black" man from East Africa. Did he have "Arab" genes? Probably. But just because the Luo run around claiming to be "Arabs" is no reason for anyone to believe them.
The fact that BHO, Jr. is rather "pale," is typical of many mulattos, some of whom are more European looking than others. It's no reason to impute heavy "Arab" ancestry to him, just because the LUO do it to get over on their neighbors, who are as black or not, as they are.
I read the book a couple of years ago "Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa" by Keith Ritchburg. While looking for the name of the book, I came across this snippet from a liberal reviewer when it was published:
"...The dust cover of Out of America shows a serious and thoughtful black man, who is quite dark in color. This is important, for it means that, in Africa, Keith B. Richburg is often taken for an African on first view, and subjected to the harassment and indignities which Africans can experience at airports and border crossings and in government offices. Richburg writes of literally waving his passport to impress officials that he is an expatriate and an American. At the same time, we are made to realize how much deference and special treatment white people still receive in Africa, some times and some places...
If you read the book, what he found most completely disillusioning about the experience was NOT that whites are treated differently from blacks, but that racism and an even more deadly variant, tribalism, is rampant between Africans themselves.
Your post reminded me of that book, because people would either open doors or close them, snub or accept him, or even, try to kill him or protect him on the basis of the shade of pigmentation he had (comparatively speaking) or the prominence of various features of his face, eyes, nose, cheekbones, etc.
As I recall, he was devastated by this discovery, that, in Africa, amongst blacks (who he thought should all share a comradeship due to their lack of white skin) there was racism and prejudice much worse than anything he had ever in his life as an American encountered in America.
Again, great post Kenny Bunk...
Lips are Nilotic not negro
Very interesting, and I accept your thesis.