Irish immigrants during the 1840-1900 period were not initially considered "white", nor were Italians & Spanish during their period of peak immigration (1890-1920 & 1830-1860, respectively). You see this with NINA (No Irish Need Apply) signs around the turn of the century, and with old WW2 movies where the Italian and Spanish characters are often still called "wops" or "spics". There are some fascinating books and articles on this, eg. https://books.google.ie/books/about/How_the_Irish_became_whi...

The history of immigration and of "whiteness" in the U.S. is a fascinating study in cognitive biases. If you look at groups that we consider fully American now (eg. Irish-Americans) vs. how we considered them when they first immigrated, it's night-and-day (except for African-Americans people, who were shat upon when they were first brought over and are still shat upon now). It's clear, historically, that we were mistaken in the past, and yet people still make the same mistake, probably because it is evolutionarily useful to consider yourself superior to other people and socially useful to do so in groups. Indeed, even in the most PC, liberal, progressive, colorblind, diversity-affirming circles, the same dynamic still plays out, except that the "other" in those cases is rural dwellers, or people who didn't graduate from college, or folks who live in the South.

If we're ignoring the law, why aren't you ignoring race?