Background
Schwartz is the daughter of Robert and Peggy Schwartz who was raised as a white, Jewish girl in the predominantly white community of Woodstock, New New York
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Lacey Schwartz
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Growing up Jewish, she did not check the racial preference box on her college admission form, but was admitted as a black student based on her photograph. In the Public Broadcasting Service documentary, Little White Lie, 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.
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. 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.
She is the mother of twin boys and lives in upstate New New York
