Whiteness is real. Even White ethnics, like this Latvian man, notice it. Just because there exist White ethnicities who often define themselves by their ethnic identity doesn't mean that they don't also recognize Whiteness as a race apart from the rest of the world.
A point I've made before is that Whiteness as a personal identifier will become more salient and more palpable to Whites who are increasingly surrounded by nonwhites. Whites are less apt to singularly define themselves by their ethnic ancestry when their Whiteness is what sets them apart from the nonwhite hordes.
Our identity is formed within (what we see when we look at a mirror or travel our memories and thoughts), but also formed from without (what others see about us). And nonwhites generally do not make ethnic distinctions among Whites; they see "Whiteness", not "Irishness" or "Germanness" etc. So when ethnicity-first Whites are encircled by nonwhites, they will tend to take on the identity imposed on them by their resource competitors.
We see this "Whitening" process happening in America and now, even in Europe (a continent that has had a long history of ethnicity-first Whites who never really had a "White Identity" movement….to take the most obvious example, Austrian Painter's reign was about elevating the German people back to self-respect, though Hitler also grasped the essential nature of the White race vs the world).
Whiteness identification is most pronounced in America, where the nonwhite overrun is accelerating and also where an American White ethnicity never completely formed, leaving an ethnicity void that could be readily filled by a racial identity.
