Lacey Schwartz

Lacey Schwartz (born 1977) is an American filmmaker, most notable for her 2015 PBS documentary Little White Lie.

Lacey Schwartz
Born1977
Alma materGeorgetown University
Harvard Law School
OccupationFilmmaker
Known forLittle White Lie
Spouse(s)
​
(
m. after 2011)
Children2

Early life

Schwartz, the daughter of Robert and Peggy Schwartz, was raised white and Jewish in the predominantly white community of Woodstock, New York. She did not check the racial identity box on her college admission form, but was admitted as a black student based on her photograph.[1] She was not aware that she was a multi-racial American and that Rodney Parker, an African American, was her biological father until she confronted her mother in college.[2]

Career

In the PBS documentary, Little White Lie,[3][4] she tells the story about her unusual upbringing and how finally embracing her racial identity has brought her a modicum of peace. She had never considered her life to be "passing" but found a commonality with the people she met in the Black Student Alliance at Georgetown University. She went on to graduate from Harvard Law School, where she met her future husband Antonio Delgado.[5]

Her parents, whenever she questioned her identity growing up, had an answer that sufficed when she was still a child. The family album had pictures of her paternal ancestor, a Sicilian Jew who was of a very dark complexion.[6] When she entered college life, the looks she got from African-American friends led her to rethink how she had viewed herself and by the time she entered her thirties and began making the film, the truth had already come out. The family secret, an affair that her mother had with an African-American, also led to the breakup of her parent's marriage when her father found out about the affair and affirmed what everyone else already knew, that she was the product of multi-racial heritage and not the white girl she had always thought that she was.[7]

She was born 10 years after the Supreme Court had made its ruling in the case of Loving v. Virginia, which held interracial marriage was legal and there was a spike in births of children born to parents who were black and white, the author Anna Holmes calling that cohort the "Loving Generation".[8]

Personal life

In 2011, Lacey was married to Antonio Delgado.[9] In November 2018, her husband was elected to represent New York's 19th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the mother of identical twin boys[10] and lives in upstate New York.[11]

See also

References
  1. Jane Mulkerrins (July 12, 2015). "Meet the black woman raised to believe she was white". The Daily Telegraph.
  2. Dolsten, Josefin (November 6, 2018). "NY House candidate Antonio Delgado's wife opens up about couple's Jewish life". The Times of Israel. Retrieved May 9, 2019.
  3. Genetta M. Adams (March 22, 2015). "Little White Lie Documentary: Growing Up White Until a Family Secret Revealed She Was Not". The Root. Archived from the original on June 12, 2015. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  4. "Little White Lie". PBS. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  5. "Lacey Schwartz, Antonio Delgado". September 25, 2011. Archived from the original on June 13, 2015. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
  6. Lee, Felicia R. (August 1, 2014). "'Little White Lie,' Lacey Schwartz's Film About Self-Discovery". The New York Times. Retrieved May 9, 2019.
  7. Marissa Charles. "'I was living in a racial closet': Black filmmaker Lacey Schwartz on growing up white". Salon.com. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  8. Anna Holmes (February 10, 2018). "Black With (Some) White Privilege". The New York Times. p. SR1.
  9. "Lacey Schwartz, Antonio Delgado: Weddings". The New York Times. September 25, 2011. Retrieved October 20, 2018.
  10. "Lacey Schwartz". Stone Fox Bride. February 17, 2017.
  11. "Little White Lie: Lacey Schwartz Uproots Her Family Tree". PBS. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
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