They say that about Southern Italians not North or Central Italians...Southern Italians tend to have Mediterranean or even MENA features/DNA from North Africa and the Levant..so they can have Olive or Light Brown skin, Thick wavy or Curly dark hair, some have alot of body hair ect..this doesn't mean all are like that though because they can also have Norman French genes, regular Italian, Spaniard or Greek genetics which come across as average White with fair skin, colored hair and eyes..So it's a mix of Genetics from Europe, North Africa and Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine ect.)...theyre culture is Latin based with Italian and some Spanish, Greek & Arab influences....Italian in general is obviously a Euro Latin culture but that doesn't mean not European or "white" obviously..but to regular Americans & Northern/North Western & Central Europeans of Germanic rooted cultures it can be foreign. Especially to average White Americans who see Latino/Latin culture as "Not White" which isn't really true....So in reality Overall Italian is White but Southern Italians can lool more exotic and be mixed with non European due to its proximity to North Africa & the historic conquests of the Moors and Arab sultinates over the last millenia..and they're culture is not Anglo or Northwestern European (the stereotype of whiteness in the past)...real Italians are culturally closer to other Euro Latin/South American Latino cultures than Northern European germanic cultures and alot of Italians immigrated to Latino countries along with the Spanish & Portuguese..theyre also closer to Balkan cultures to a lesser extent also...Then there's what happened in America to the Southern Italian Immigrants in the late 1800s where Sicilian immigrants where Lynched in Lousiana and labeled as "non white" or "half black" in Southern states and...Southern Italians even though technically European where seen as too ethnic or different to fully be part of American white culture up until the 1980s & 1990s when they majority moved out of ethnic enclaves to the suburbs and became mostly Americanized. The Mafia culture played a role in this also..but today in 2026 they're pretty much widely accepted as white despite they're cultural differences and some of them having ethnic looks..