{"id":40601,"date":"2015-03-24T17:35:49","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T17:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40601"},"modified":"2015-03-24T17:35:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T17:35:49","slug":"growing-up-white-until-a-family-secret-revealed-she-was-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40601","title":{"rendered":"Growing Up White Until a Family Secret Revealed She Was Not"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theroot.com\/articles\/culture\/2015\/03\/little_white_lie_documentary_growing_up_white_until_a_family_secret_revealed.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Growing Up White Until a Family Secret Revealed She Was Not<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theroot.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Root<\/a><br \/>\n2015-03-22<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GenettaAdams\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Genetta M. Adams<\/strong><\/a>, Senior Editor<\/p>\n<p><em>In the documentary <\/em>Little White Lie<em>, filmmaker Lacey Schwartz spins a compelling story about embracing her racial identity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Lacey Schwartz grew up as a white, Jewish girl in the predominantly white community of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Woodstock,_New_York\" target=\"_blank\">Woodstock, N.Y.<\/a>, raised by Peggy and Robert Schwartz. But what she didn\u2019t know at the time was that her biological father was black.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of \u201cpassing\u201d for white has long been a part of African-American culture. But Schwartz\u2019s story isn\u2019t one about passing. She truly believed that she was white.<\/p>\n<p>How she came to embrace her biracial identity and confront her parents about the family secret is the subject of her documentary, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.littlewhiteliethefilm.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Little White Lie<\/em><\/a>, which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/little-white-lie\/\" target=\"_blank\">airs Monday on PBS as part of its <em>Independent Lens<\/em> series<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Judging someone\u2019s racial identity by appearance alone can be tricky\u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theroot.com\/blogs\/the_grapevine\/2015\/03\/awkward_cbs_host_assumed_jay_smooth_was_co_opting_blackness_until_he_said.html\" target=\"_blank\">the recent story about Nancy Giles\u2019 reaction to Jay Smooth<\/a> makes that point fairly obvious. But when Schwartz was a child, her light-brown skin and curly hair elicited comments from people outside her immediate family circle: At her bat mitzvah, a woman from the synagogue mistook Lacey for an Ethiopian Jew.<\/p>\n<p>When Schwartz questioned her parents, her father showed her a portrait of her Sicilian great-grandfather, whose darker skin seemingly provided an explanation for her own. Schwartz, like everyone around her, bought this story&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theroot.com\/articles\/culture\/2015\/03\/little_white_lie_documentary_growing_up_white_until_a_family_secret_revealed.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Growing Up White Until a Family Secret Revealed She Was Not The Root 2015-03-22 Genetta M. Adams, Senior Editor In the documentary Little White Lie, filmmaker Lacey Schwartz spins a compelling story about embracing her racial identity. Lacey Schwartz grew up as a white, Jewish girl in the predominantly white community of Woodstock, N.Y., raised [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,8,820,20],"tags":[19737,19736,9849,3602,18760,19697,19696,3234],"class_list":["post-40601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-religion","category-usa","tag-genetta-adams","tag-genetta-m-adams","tag-independent-lens","tag-lacey-schwartz","tag-little-white-lie","tag-peggy-schwartz","tag-robert-schwartz","tag-the-root"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40601","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=40601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}