Southern whites classified Sicilians as nonwhite and ‘Negroes with white skin’

Evidence

“Negroes with white skin.” That was how white Americans considered Italians, according to the historian Alan G. Gauthreaux. Why? Because Italians, in particular those from Sicily, broke all social and economic conventions when it came to living in the American South. It also did not help that their skin was considered darker than that of their fellow countrymen from northern Italy. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 118

Categorization

• DEFINE: The white-skin classification captures the contortions of racial classification, itself a definitional tool in whiteness scholarship.
• XREF: Directly connects to Brown’s earlier ‘Whiteness of Wealth’ diagnosis of race-as-socially-constructed property.