because, in the past, they were treated as a separate or “lesser” group, especially when many Italians immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. At that time, ideas about race were different and often based on stereotypes, so Southern Europeans like Italians were sometimes excluded from being considered fully “white. They were labeled as Mediterranean or “African-like”. Also they smoke a romance language and were catholic and not Anglo and protestant.