Totally agree with your first point. Its also central to Ignatiev's argument.

That theconversation article is revisionist verbiage, both more Woke and less scholarly than Ignatiev. The early-1600s date for first use of "White" as an ethnonym surprises me, will follow up the source. The rest of the argument is unreferenced bilge. The West Indies in particular were defined by free/unfree identities, even between people of the same skin tone. The first slaves sold in the West Indies were Irish, you know. And many plantation owners were black.

"Whiteness" may or may not have been circulating as a concept among playwrights, but it was conspicuous in its absence from public life until the 1800s in America, and even later in the British Empire.