The Spanish he sailed under weren’t considered white. The Portugese where he came from wasn’t considered white. And Italians weren’t really considered white in the U.S. until late 1800s early 1900s. The terms WOP, Dago/Dego, Polac are terms I was still called in 90s, early 2000s as my father’s side is from Sicily, and my mother’s side was from Poland. Those terms stem from the not being accepted as white.

Many people who discussed culture in the early 1900s believed to become white and treated as such you would have to earn it over a few decades of proving prosperity in the U.S. It was all pretty shitty.