Are Southern Europeans white?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is something I’ve asked myself to be honest.
I’m Italian, and Catholic. Were this say, even as recent as the 1920s, I wouldn’t be considered a white person. My grandfather wasn’t allowed in a “White’s Only” Establishment in the 1950s when stationed in the Army down in Alabama because of his skin tone. They thought him a “Latin” or a light skinned “Negro.”

My grandfather, in skin tone, and even in looks, could have, in his youth, been a double for Lou Diamond Phillips. In later years, he was even darker than him:

Or take the Greeks. Look at some like Aristotle Onasis, his coloring, his nose, his complexion and features. He could easily pass for a Semitic person, or an “Arabic” person in less eloquent language.

So my question is as such: Are Southern Europeans White?

I know in my own self, I don’t consider myself truly a “White” person. I’m labelled as such because of my skin color. But my ancestors weren’t Mayflower people. I’m not a Protestant. Like many other groups, my people’s culture, traditions and language were lost in the pressure to “assimilate.” My skin tone ranges from pale, to olive depending on the season. I feel a great deal of sympathy for the people assigned as Latinos, because I feel like they’re the new Italians/Irish of our society. I am not what would’ve called “Anglo Saxon” in past times in any way. The earliest ancestors I have in America arrived in the 1840s, served in the Union Army in the Civil War, and did not own any slaves.

2

All of the Italian and Greek girls I dated, I considered “white”.

3

People who would consider Mediterranian people to be non-white are using White as short hand for “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant”. (This is also true of people who say that “Jews aren’t white”. For example, the consider the attitudes on display in the Dorothy Sayers’ novel, Have His Carcass, where the various upper class, Oxford educated, white people discuss Russians and Frenchman with equal disdain.

Nowadays, most Americans have stopped caring about the Catholic/Protestant thing but, with people who worry about “who is a White man”, Christian is still non-negotiable.

4

I can’t really comprehend the question, and I would be considered more racist than most Americans because I think races exist, but don’t matter. Italy and Germany are the twin foundations or Europe: and historically Italy would have a lot of Middle Eastern and African blood in the mix, whereas Germany would have a lot of Slavic and Celtish blood. And that’s to say the least, ignoring all the other immigration, and individual relationships, and links around the world.
‘White’ doesn’t mean ‘British’ or ‘Norse’ as admirable as those are; if anything it means adherence to shared western civilization. One may have a strong physical preference for the looks of certain peoples, but I can’t imagine thinking about or caring about their ancestry.