“The guide used at the time of Obama’s birth uses the number 9 for “Other Nonwhites,” not “unstated.”
Back in those days, 9 or all 9s were used as filler for data fields left blank, especially for numeric fields that had to be filled with numbers. Ordinarily, a 9 meant a null field. It occurs to me that the numbers Verna coded might have been codes used by the Hawaiian Dept. of Health for their internal statistics. That may be why they have so many different codes specifically separating out the various ethnic groups typically found in Hawaii. There’s another part of a birth certificate that we never see—that’s the part with the medical information, such as how many pregnancies a mother had, how many children born alive, how many born dead, how many miscarriages, etc. If you look at the pdf Kleon linked, that has some of that private data. That seems to be the part of the birth record that was coded for the national statistics. If the codes we see on Obama’s so-called birth certificate are for Hawaiian use only, that might explain why they’re on the record. Daily Pen pointed out that the federal government had coded and transmitted to them only birth certificates with an even birth certificate number. So Obama’s shouldn’t have HAD codes in the first place.