Who, exactly, is white?

The answer sounds obvious — we know a white person when we see one, we think. But when Italians poured into America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they were not considered white.
Greeks, for example, fretted about being mistaken for Puerto Ricans, mulattoes or Mexicans.

Organizations representing people of Middle Eastern and North African descent are asking the Census Bureau to add a new category on forms. People of this heritage are now categorized as “white,” a decades-old practice advocacy groups say is inaccurate.

The Arab population in American is small but growing, and its exact size is disputed. The Census Bureau estimates there are 1.8 million Arabs in the U.S., up 51% since 2000.

In 1909, Levantines pooled their resources in Los Angeles County to win the first case to classify Middle Easterners as Caucasian. Arabs trying to avoid the restrictions of Asian immigration, won key court cases to change their racial classification to Caucasian.