Need to timestamp that too. Native Americans weren't white. Then Columbus came, and he wasn't white. The Spanish/Portugese were here for what, 100 years before England. Really gotta ignore at least the first 75% of years after Mary got knocked up till now.
If Mexicans and Brazilians and every other area colonized by Portugal and Spain are considered not white, I can't say that Columbus would be considered white. He was Portuguese sailing under the Spanish flag. If anything we could argue Italian.. but they werent considered white in America until almost the 50s
Edit: Look at Florida, Spanish name, Spanish flag origins, yet people coming from Puerto Rico and Mexico speaking Spanish are considered non-white and receive hate for speaking Spanish
The Spanish he sailed under weren't considered white. The Portugese where he came from wasn't considered white. And Italians weren't really considered white in the U.S. until late 1800s early 1900s. The terms WOP, Dago/Dego, Polac are terms I was still called in 90s, early 2000s as my father's side is from Sicily, and my mother's side was from Poland. Those terms stem from the not being accepted as white.
Many people who discussed culture in the early 1900s believed to become white and treated as such you would have to earn it over a few decades of proving prosperity in the U.S. It was all pretty shitty.
There was no US in the 1490s to give their opinion on this topic. Why judge this on some arbitrary period of history which is neither contemporary with the facts nor current? What a weird take.
The discussion is about the U.S. constitution. What the U.S.'s opinion was, is the topic. The arbitrary time period discussed was from the constitutions existence till now. What are you discussing?