W.A.S.P.s and Irish and Joseph Kennedy?

So, recently, one of my proud, Irish, conservative, dogmatic, indoctinaire friends and I got into a little bit of a heated discussion. Well, he was bothering me because he was talking about the Civil Rights Movement and he likes to blame a lot of problems on African Americans. Now, I have a lot of compion for African Americans, so I brought up the fact that, when the Irish came over during the potato famine, the White Anglo Saxon Protestants did not want to let them in because, to the W.A.S.P.s, the Irish were considered physical abominations, subhuman, freckled redheads that weren't truly white; also, because they were Catholic, they were singled out. So, I made this argument--that Irish people were n-i-g-g-e-r-z when they came here and he would not hear it. I also told him that the Irish were just as much a part of the Civil Rights Movement as the blacks, the italians, the jews, and many other ethnicities the WASPs. Then he brought up one of his favorite books, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," wherein Thomas Sowell talks about SCOTCH-Irish, who are not truly Irish people and who were tolerated by the W.A.S.P.s because of their Presbyterian faith and looks; my "friend" thought that Sowell was talking about Irish people, so I shot down that argument. Then we got onto the subject of JFK and his father who was a wealthy man. This is where I am perplexed. I understant that the Irish brought from Ireland their catholic faith and the political machine and--according to a lot of more liberal "historians" with more liberal interpretations of history--they had to resort to being involved in a lot of corruption with trade unions (they still are); all in all, looking at history, they caused a TON of problems in America, but when did the Irish people start to become accepted into America and how did Joseph Kennedy get into Harvard, a school that was for a very long time influenced by the WASPs--it still is, too? Why are the Kennedys an exception?