[Cronos]

Wrong again. All categories mentioned are "caucasian."

That is NOW. Until the late 1800s, the English and by extension Americans of that time did not consider Irish to be "white". In the early 1800s, that fate befell Germans, while in the 1900s, the Eastern Europeans and Italians were looked at askance.

Jews, technically, are not caucasians, they are Semites, just like Arabs or Egyptians or Berbers or Syrians.

[GVnana]

I did my senior thesis in history using the 1850 Federal Census. (The first census conducted after the Irish potato famine, BTW.)

This link shows a sample enumeration page. http://c.ancestry.com/pdf/trees/charts/1850.pdf?cj=1&o_xid=0002489095&o_lid=0002489095

There is no "ethnic identity," there is no "racial identity." You got the choice of White, Black, or Mulatto. Which one do you think the Irish would have chosen?

Perhaps you confuse the bias against "non WASPs" with an idea that Irish were not considered "White"?

By the 1870 census the categories were: White, Black, Mulatto, Chinese, Indian. Same in 1880.

These early usages conform with the scientific thinking of the time that the three great races were Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid.

Hope this helps.