[Dr. Sivana]

WCPE’s protest came at a time when the Metropolitan Opera is eager to showcase its commitment to recently written operas and works from outside the traditional canon of music written by white men.

The U.S. WASPs in the Know-Nothing era would not really consider Italians and other southern Europeans to be of the same race.

[Verginius Rufus]

It wasn’t just the Know Nothings of the 1850s. The reason for the immigrant quotas adopted in 1921 and 1924 was to keep out Italians and other southern and eastern Europeans who were considered undesirables.