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.
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.