My friend (and banjo player in my trio) was doing his doctoral research in Africa. While living there he applied for a driver's license.

He came to the part of the application that referred to "color". Uncertain, he looked to his left and right at two dark-skinned men who stood there filling out similar forms and noticed that one had put down "yellow" while the other had marked "red".

Further puzzled, being American, and therefore assuming that by "color" they were referring to "race", but seeing two blacks fill in red and yellow instead, he went to the desk and asked the clerk what he was supposed to put in this blank.

The clerk looked at him for a second or two and then called over his supervisor. The supervisor asked my friend to show him the undersides of his arms and, when my friend did, said, "white, very".

Seems that what was necessary for the purposes of identification was description, not affiliation.