> 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.)

> Teddy Roosevelt, not yet president, famously said the lynching was indeed "a rather good thing".[15] John M. Parker helped organize the lynch mob, and in 1911 was elected as governor of Louisiana. He described Italians as "just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in their habits, lawless, and treacherous".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Italianism

Haiti codified "whiteness" into law way before then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Haiti