> Italians weren't "white" when they first came to the US, either.
Italians have been "white" since the dawn of the construction of "race" in which "white" was even one of the options.
(They've been othered as "ethnic" in a way which closely mirrors othering on race-qua-race, and we use "racism" to describe both racial and ethnic bigotry, but while similar and sharing some features, the two things were not the same in the US.)
