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Comment by unmole

4 years ago

> many groups that used to be called non-white, are now called white.

Like which ones?

Add Jews to the list other commenters have provided here.

“The History of White People” by Nell Irvin Painter covers this idea in depth.

  • Anti-semites still don't think jews classify as "white" people. For a lot of americans, "whiteness" has nothing to do with skin pigmentation.

The Irish:

https://www.theroot.com/when-the-irish-weren-t-white-1793358...

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/where-the-irish-are-not-quit...

Eastern Europeans, Poles, Slavs, Hungarians:

https://andscape.com/features/white-immigrants-werent-always...

Southern Europeans who live by the Mediterranean sea. Italians, Spanish, Greeks

  • Another commenter posted this link, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... , but it makes the convincing case that that was never true. Italians, Spaniards and Greeks we're always considered white in the ways the actually mattered in the US. They could drink from "whites only" drinking fountains. They could marry folks of British descent and nobody considered this an "interracial marriage". They could join unions that had "whites only" membership policies.