{"id":36944,"date":"2014-08-02T16:59:51","date_gmt":"2014-08-02T16:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=36944"},"modified":"2017-05-03T17:08:54","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T17:08:54","slug":"after-the-white-lie-implodes-a-rich-narrative-unfurls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=36944","title":{"rendered":"After the \u2018White Lie\u2019 Implodes, a Rich Narrative Unfurls"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the \u2018White Lie\u2019 Implodes, a Rich Narrative Unfurls<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2014-08-01<\/p>\n

Felicia R. Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Little White Lie,\u2019 Lacey Schwartz\u2019s Film About Self-Discovery<\/em><\/p>\n

Lacey Schwartz, a 37-year-old Harvard Law School graduate turned filmmaker, moves with ease in circles in which her identity as both black and Jewish seems unremarkable. What makes her biography striking is that Ms. Schwartz, a woman with light brown skin and a cascade of dark curls, grew up believing she was white.<\/p>\n

How and why that happened is the subject of her film, \u201cLittle White Lie<\/a>,\u201d which has its premiere on Sunday at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival<\/a>, its first stop on the festival circuit before being broadcast on PBS next year. With Ms. Schwartz narrating, the camera travels to a funeral, girlfriend gab sessions and even her therapy appointments. At each stop, in raw conversations with family and friends, Ms. Schwartz asks over and over, how and why did she pass as white?<\/p>\n

\u201cI come from a long line of New York Jews,\u201d she says early in the film, as photographs of her white relatives flash across the screen. \u201cMy family knew who they were, and they defined who I was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Schwartz was an only child who grew up in the mostly white town of Woodstock, N.Y.<\/a> Her parents, Peggy and Robert Schwartz, told her that she favored her father\u2019s swarthy Sicilian grandfather. It was not until she went off to college that she learned the truth.<\/p>\n

Before starting college, \u201cI was already questioning my whiteness because of what other people said and because I was aware that I looked different from my family,\u201d she said in a recent interview. Then, based on the photograph accompanying her application, Georgetown University passed her name along to the black student association, which contacted her.<\/p>\n

The university \u201cgave me permission\u201d to explore a black identity, Ms. Schwartz said…<\/p>\n

…Bliss Broyard explored similar territory in a memoir about her father<\/a>, the book critic Anatole Broyard<\/a>, a black man who passed<\/a> as white. She has said she was raised white but learned the truth about her father on his deathbed. But Ms. Broyard, unlike Ms. Schwartz, grew up with her biological father.<\/p>\n

Jenifer L. Bratter<\/a>, director of the Program for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Culture<\/a> at Rice University, said the film\u2019s twisting tale was part of \u201ca larger story about race in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBiological race trumps cultural race,\u201d she added. \u201cRace is something we\u2019re really invested in validating or comprehending. It\u2019s about how we understand race as a marker of difference, something that a story about ancestry can\u2019t resolve.\u201d..<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little White Lie,\u2019 Lacey Schwartz\u2019s Film About Self-Discovery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,5,125,3601,8,6462,820,20],"tags":[4913,4912,215,344,3602,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-36944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-book-reviews","category-identitydevelopment","category-judaism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-religion","category-usa","tag-felicia-lee","tag-felicia-r-lee","tag-jenifer-bratter","tag-jenifer-l-bratter","tag-lacey-schwartz","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36944"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53764,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36944\/revisions\/53764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}