“A hundred years ago, Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish immigrants pouring into Ellis Island were considered to be of different “races” by white Anglo-Saxon Protestant elites.”
No, they were not considered different races. There have been people from all three of these groups in America since at least the Revolution. This is a variant of the “Irish weren’t considered white” lie. It is part of an effort to deconstruct the idea of white people in order to erase them from the face of the Earth. The earliest immigration law in the United States opened it to free white persons of good character. That’s the Naturalization Act of 1790.
The terminology wasn’t exact, but in the 19th and early 20th century, they did use the word “race” in referring to the “inferior species,” such as the Irish, Jews, blacks, Italians and Southern Europeans in general.
Margaret Sanger considered anybody who wasn’t a WASP like her to be a member of an inferior race, and these people had to be stamped out and prevented from “breeding.” And she was fully racist in her speech. Yes, that Margaret Sanger, the big feminist hero.
In my hometown (a midsize industrial city in the Great Lakes region) in my parents' lifetime, a Polish/German couple was considered a "mixed marriage."
Ad when the Puerto Ricans came in in the 60's: White? No way! (People said then.) And it had little or nothing to do with color.
Except for the hair and the attitude.
No, they were not considered different races. There have been people from all three of these groups in America since at least the Revolution. This is a variant of the “Irish weren’t considered white”
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there was a time when the word race also meant ethnic origin.