Indeed, this is referenced explicitly in the piece that he quotes:

As with the experience of the American Irish, Italians, Jews, and many other groups, the Asian experience shows that racial divisions and hostilities can subside over time.

But regarding that piece, I found the following passage problematic:

And it’s evidence of the essential fairness of the American capitalist system, which has rewarded this hard work even though many people, including many government officials, tried to penalize it.

I submit that the phenomenon in question describes the essential unfairness of the American system, capitalist or otherwise. If people can be "rewarded" for their "hard work" in spite of their race only when that racial identity is subsumed by whiteness, it only reinforces the existing power structure. Or, the author might argue, it was this success and recognition that led to the change in racial perception. Either way, it's not what I call fair.

Probably not at all - his article is a play on the title of a fairly recent book, How the Irish became white. As an Irish person (from Ireland) I was amused when I arrived in the US 20 years ago that people were still asking questions like whether I had grown up with electricity.

He seems to think that white has always meant Caucasian; that's incompatible with the idea that Irishmen, Italians, and Germans were once not-white. Although he nods to the fact that Caucasian has always had rather fluid boundaries, it never has excluded any of those groups: historically it was a pseudo-scientific concept invented by a German philosopher, and included everyone from Norsemen to Indians to Libyans.

Whiteness in American racial discourse has never mapped to this idea, as it has at various points excluded most European groups. And many groups that would have been considered Caucasian in the 19th century Americans would never naturally consider white, even today--Arabs and Indians, for instance.