How come Italians weren’t considered white by Americans until the 1950's, even though Rome was the birth place of modern Western Civilization and Hitler believed Italians were Aryan whites?

Was it because of their mixed race shit skin or their Catholicism?

>>17776513 (OP)
It was when blacks from the south began migrating to the urban areas of the north that Italians became accepted as white.

>>17776513 (OP)
Because they were Catholic