"Little White Lie": a film review

I'm a big fan of documentary film, memoir, and multicultural stories.  Suffice it to say, Lacey Schwartz's movie Little White Lie checked my boxes.  I was floored by the many parallels between her story and my own: the scenes of her as a little brown girl, in the arms of her Jewish white mother, then growing into an ambiguously brown young woman with "black friends" and "white friends", and being the only brown face in family photos...  she could have been me. But our stories are far from identical.

We differ in the Paternity Department.  My biological father was no secret.  Although my parents split up very early,  he was present in my life, and I was always told by my mother that I was black, because he was black.  But my father distanced himself - and me - from his family.  All of my memories of family gatherings are with my mother's people.  I grew up in a Jewish and Irish neighborhood, and had only white playmates outside of school.  So it's no wonder I've been accused of "acting white".  I've even been taken for white.  Which I am.  Just as I am black.  I have struggled to balance my two-sided identity, while Lacey Schwartz's family secret delayed her ability to even address hers.  Her black father, and her black identity, were hidden from her until her late teens.

In every scene, Lacey reminds me so much of myself that I can only see her as a mixed brown girl. She incredibly managed to get through the first sixteen years of her life without any friends or family members questioning her lineage. When she finally confronts her father, the man who raised her, he's unable to put the truth of her paternity into words. He's clearly pained, but waits until a much later point in the film (and their lives) to divulge that his wife never confessed her affair to him. They raised Lacey as their white, Jewish daughter, because that's who they were.

I admire this family's willingness to let the cameras roll through such deeply personal moments.  Ms. Schwartz and her parents expose their secret, and their hearts, in order to share this strange and powerful story.  It's a great addition to the Independent Lens catalog of documentary films, one that will surely prompt new discussions about race, identity, and being mixed.

You can stream the film in its entirety at IndependentLens.org

Related memoirs: The Color of Water, by James McBride; Black, White and Jewish, by Rebecca Walker; Bulletproof Diva, by Lisa Jones.