This was her first clue that something was happening that did not fit traditional motives for racially based actions. Part of this is that as whites we have been trained to reserve racial modifiers for those who are not white. It is assumed that not using a modifier means the person is white, one of us. To speak otherwise, is to break an unspoken but fully present assumption of racial exclusivity. By explicitly talking about being white one risks exposing a hidden truth, neither the white speaker or listener feels white enough.
Shame is and emotional display of a hidden civil war.
Rather than continue to suffer such attacks, the Euro-American child defends itself by creating a white racial identity for itself. It begins to think and act like its community's ideal of a white self. When the adult recalls the feelings and ideas it had to set aside in order to mound this defense, it feels shame. More precisely, white shame. Shame is the death of an unloved part of the self because it, apparently, is just not good enough to be loved.