If you're talking about 'whiteness' in the academic sense, then the US has a huge impact, because a very sizeable chunk of the writings on race and racism come out of the US. So sure, it's a useful point of hugeness in that sense. But dealing with the US does tend to disguise the fact that it's not actually that useful a model for other countries. In relation to the whitening of the Irish, for instance, countries like Australia have only barely passed the mark. And it's arguable that the Irish have become "white" in the UK at all (although Northern Ireland isn't the hotspot it was even 10 years ago).
The reality is that Europe has vastly more complicated and interwoven national politics, which interferes with racial analyses, because skin colour, culture and ethnicity become divergent in ways that simply aren't possible in countries like the US. In the US, people are Americans, who are then white or coloured. But the same isn't true of Europe, because the commonality of European citizenship isn't really a commonality. It's a difference that comes through quite strongly in European writings on race, where race tends to take a subsidiary position to issues like class or national identity. (Well, that's also because Europe have that much stronger history of academic socialism). But dealing with racial issues in Europe (and even, to a similar extent, Asia and South America) in terms of whiteness is at best confusing and at worst dangerous.
To a lesser extent, this is true also in Australia, where Aboriginality and blackness have a huge number of different variants, and what whiteness exists does so in a relatively recent and sometimes fragile state for a lot of those who would be placed within the categories.
If, of course, you're not talking about academic whiteness, I think I've completely missed your point.
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Ah, Europe, such a quaint little village
The reality is that Europe has vastly more complicated and interwoven national politics, which interferes with racial analyses, because skin colour, culture and ethnicity become divergent in ways that simply aren't possible in countries like the US. In the US, people are Americans, who are then white or coloured. But the same isn't true of Europe, because the commonality of European citizenship isn't really a commonality. It's a difference that comes through quite strongly in European writings on race, where race tends to take a subsidiary position to issues like class or national identity. (Well, that's also because Europe have that much stronger history of academic socialism). But dealing with racial issues in Europe (and even, to a similar extent, Asia and South America) in terms of whiteness is at best confusing and at worst dangerous.
To a lesser extent, this is true also in Australia, where Aboriginality and blackness have a huge number of different variants, and what whiteness exists does so in a relatively recent and sometimes fragile state for a lot of those who would be placed within the categories.
If, of course, you're not talking about academic whiteness, I think I've completely missed your point.