Are any of you familiar with the African concept of race?

In my culture, race is patrilineal. For example,I am Buja. My mother is of the VaHera, her mother is of the VaKorekore. My patrilineal grandmother is a Buja. I take my identity from my father, and will pass it on to my children and it will continue in the male line.

This means that four generations of interracial unions later and my descendants are blue-eyed blonde whites or slant eyed japanese or whatever, as long as they are in the male line, they are still as Buja as their cousins in north-east Zimbabwe- my people's ancestral home. By this same logic, Bob Marley is Scottish, as are Ziggy & siblings.

Skin colour does not come in to it. Did you know that there are no words in my language that are equivalent to any of the racial terms in English? Even the term for a white person simply means "foreigner". And even so, we tend not to use the word "foreigner", preferring euphemisms like "mubvakure" meaning "One who comes from afar".

As much as words are needed to convey and keep thoughts, I should say that we Africans had this whole race issue figured out a long time ago.