Benjamin Franklin had some odd ideas about ethnicity.
> Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. [...] And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. [...] why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People?
Interestingly, he wanted to "increas[e] the lovely White and Red." So Native Americans were OK. They became less OK as time passed.