WEBVTT - Little White Lie 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:04.320 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Lacey 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.400 Schwartz was born into a Jewish family who lived in Woodstock, 0:00:07.440 --> 0:00:12.959 New York. Her twenty sixteen documentary, Little White Lye, begins 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.720 with glimpses of home movies Lacy as a young child 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:20.959 surrounded by her family. This is in the late nineteen seventies. 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:24.560 Her mom is fair with big blue eyes. Her dad 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:29.280 is dark haired, intense looking, brooding. Actually, her parents look 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:32.479 kind of cool, hippieish, like a young James Taylor and 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:38.120 Carly Simon, which is appropriate since this is Woodstock. And 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:42.080 then there's Lacy. What the viewer notices instantly is that 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:45.519 the child is black, but no one in her family 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:48.920 seems to notice or take in this fact. I can't 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:51.640 stress how obvious it would be to anyone looking at 0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:54.880 this family that there is no way little Lacy, a 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:58.880 beautiful girl, was caramel skin, dark eyes, kinky hair, and 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:02.760 decidedly African American features, is the daughter of her two 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:06.280 very white parents. I mean, maybe she's the daughter of 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:11.040 one of them, but both out of the question. Except 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:13.600 this is a story in which what people wish to 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:17.520 believe will themselves to believe, becomes what they actually do 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:20.880 believe the story of a family who raises their only 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:23.960 child to believe that she is something other than who 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:37.400 she is. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:41.319 secrets that are kept from us, secrets we keep from others, 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:47.560 and secrets we keep from ourselves. So did you have 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:53.240 any sense at all growing up that something didn't quite 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:57.200 make sense? Absolutely? I mean I solely because the way 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:00.680 I loved from the time I was very very um. 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:04.080 I either have memories of being questioned about the way 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:05.920 I love and why I looked the way I did 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.720 because I did seemed to like fit in with my 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:11.880 family and surrounding and I looked different than other people, 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:14.200 And it also became almost like a little bit of 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.560 family lore that you know, the first vacation, at least 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:19.200 I was aware that we went on as a family 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:22.079 and we went to Puerto Rico, and as an infant, 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.280 you know, people thought I was Puerto Rican. So it 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:29.560 was always very clear that people thought I looked different 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:33.360 from my parents. I know something about growing up with 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.400 a profound disconnect between who I was told I was 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:39.040 and the truth that stared back at me in the 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:42.960 mirror every day. A couple of years ago. As nothing 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:45.960 more than a whim, I spit into a plastic file 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:48.080 and sent a d n A sample to one of 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:52.680 those genetic testing companies. When I got my results, I 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:56.440 found out that my dad wasn't my dad. Half of 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.560 my family tree was locked off at the roots. The 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:02.240 person I thought I was was not the person I 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:06.919 actually was, at least not biologically. At a time when 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:09.000 I was in the midst of my freak out, a 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:14.200 friend told me about Lacey's film. I watched mesmerized as 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.240 a beaming black girl held the Torah on her bot mitzvah, 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:20.639 her parents proudly looking on as she read from the 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.959 Hagada at the pass Over table with her family, as 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.760 she laughed as a toddler on her mother's lap. My 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:30.920 family knew who they were, and they defined who I was, 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:38.800 the adult, Lacey narrates. I was raised in an Orthodox 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:42.480 Jewish family on my father's side. It was a lineage 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.640 that stretched back into the shettles of Lithuania and Poland. 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:50.720 My cousins all look unmistakably Jewish. In fact, some of 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.120 them wear the black hats and long beards of Hassad's. 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:57.080 I grew up in a Kosher home, spoke fluent Hebrew, 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:01.080 and attended a yeshiva at Jewish day school. And every 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:03.880 day of my life I was told that I didn't 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:07.320 look Jewish. I was very fair and blue eyed. But 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.560 it wasn't just that I didn't look Jewish. It was 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.160 that I did look like something else, like I came 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:17.960 from another part of the world altogether. But in my family, 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:20.960 we laughed off this strange genetic twist of fate that 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:23.599 had me looking like Swiss miss wandering over from the 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:26.599 Alps and into the dusty shuttle. It was a source 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:30.520 of amusement and hilarity. I mean, when I was three 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:35.040 years old, I was the child in the Kodak Christmas poster. Literally, 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.000 I was the little girl wishing the entire world a 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:42.919 merry Christmas. As the end credits rolled in Lacy's film, 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.800 I turned to my husband Michael, so I said, the 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:49.839 level of denial in her family was really extreme, not 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:55.039 like what happened in mine. Michael paused and looked at me. Yeah, no, 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:59.960 pretty much the same, he said. There's all different kinds 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:01.600 the secrets of families kind of, but a lot of 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:05.280 times it's because people's existence. They're like stigmatized. People don't 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:07.560 want to talk about having affair, they don't want to 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:09.719 talk about being inter at all, they don't want to 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:12.240 talk about the fact that maybe they are partning before 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:16.920 our marriage. There's all different kinds of things that people 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.560 lie about, absolutely, and we're also living in a moment 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:24.960 in time where a lot of those lies or very 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:28.840 closely kept secrets are tumbling out because of the combination 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:32.120 of the Internet and DNA testing, where people find out 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:35.359 all sorts of things that were meant to be kept 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.839 secrets to the grave. Yeah. No, absolutely mean. I have 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:41.880 a bunch of friends through through genetic testing, the kind 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:44.440 of over the kind of generic testing, has found out 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:48.960 that they are not their parents child. There was within 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:52.239 my family a kind of the story that was told 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:55.200 was that my father had a dark skinned Sicilian grandfather 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:58.240 who I had never met, had passed away about her 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.920 Warren by looking at family photos, that was who I 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:05.000 looked like. It was darker as features and c around, 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:07.120 and that it was kind of its idea like re 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:10.360 set of gene And that was a story that was 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:14.719 repeated and kind of was passed on and would come 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.800 up at various moments, so I would say that, you know, 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:20.800 for me and becau's really worth knowing that, in in terms 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:22.640 of my own time, I was denial that my denial 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:26.400 was very much learned, you know, it was something that 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:30.280 was passed on to me. Lazie grows up in a 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:34.240 self described bubble in Woodstock. Despite its fame, it's a 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:38.440 small town, mostly white. No one really challenges her or 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:42.680 her parents about what is glaringly obvious. But then, as 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:48.520 bubbles do, hers begins to Expand we're going to take 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:57.480 a quick break. We'll be back in a moment. When 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:00.560 Lazy enters middle school and then high school, she's bussed 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:03.159 to a much larger town, and it's then that she 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:08.760 begins to get the questions and deep down to question herself. 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:11.040 There's a moment in your film, if I were call 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:14.480 it correctly, where there's a sense that the African American 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.200 kids in that school are looking at you like you're 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:20.840 one of us, Like what's up that this isn't making 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:25.600 you know, like we we recognize you exactly. Part of 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:27.880 that was understanding how you know, I had come to 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.160 convince myself to believe that I would still I kind 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:33.600 of push back a rationalize against it, but I would 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:37.920 say that probably around high school is when kind of stuff, 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:40.200 or maybe even middle school was when I realized that 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:42.680 you dine you the truth but wasn't willing to admit it. 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:44.560 And I think I went through most of my adolescens 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:48.080 in that phase. The phase Lacy is talking about here 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.920 has been coined by the psychoanalyst Christopher Bolas as the 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:56.520 unthought known, what we know deep down but cannot bring 0:07:56.520 --> 0:08:01.080 ourselves to think. Sometimes we spend our whole lives in 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:06.520 the unthought known, and sometimes life intervenes and we're confronted 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.120 with knowledge that we can no longer bury from ourselves. 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:15.000 When Lazy is sixteen, her parents, who had been having issues, 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:18.600 split up. This fissure in the foundation of her family 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:22.120 is the first step in a fissure inside of Lacey. 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:26.040 She can't articulate it, but she knows that something doesn't 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:29.320 make sense. The fall of her senior year, when she 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.880 applies to colleges, she leaves the box that would identify 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:38.520 her ethnicity unchecked. Back in those days, I don't think 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.120 college is still do this. Lacey would have sent a 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:46.080 photograph along with her application. So Lacey is admitted to 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:51.760 Georgetown as a black student. Do you remember anything about 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:56.120 that moment? Was that a conscious choice? Was that a 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:58.240 moment of I really just don't even know what to 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:01.520 put here? Or you tell me, like you know, it 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:03.520 almost feels like a challenge, like you tell me who 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:06.280 who am? I? And I've spent to a fair amount 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:09.280 of time analyzing this and discussing it with the people 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:11.760 that were close to me. But I think in retrospect 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.160 that what I was, even if it was, as you said, 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:17.960 the the unknown truth or what was that you said, 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:21.520 what was that crazy? The unsought known, the unsought known? 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:24.000 And that was really so my parents went around was 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:26.720 six team a junior year in high school, right, So 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:30.120 I was sending in my applications more or less that 0:09:30.240 --> 0:09:35.440 summer fall afterwards. At that point I was really my 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:37.440 bubble was popped, and so I think seeped down at 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:39.560 that point. I didn't know the truth, but I was 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:43.079 very much prioritizing the issues I was dealing with my life. 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:46.240 But at the same time, largely around I wish with 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:49.400 one person, a guy that I was dating at that time, 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:53.200 who had already gone off to college, who he himself 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:56.560 was also bi racial black and had come from the 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:58.680 same sound as me and was just saying, like, yo, 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:01.400 it's one thing that you think walking around in this 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:04.760 relatively small community that we grew up in and saying 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.640 that you're white or you know, identifying as such. But 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:10.000 you know, when you go out into the bigger world, 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:11.800 like people are going to laugh at you, like it 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:14.800 doesn't add up. And so I was conscious enough to 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:17.320 know at that point that there were things that weren't 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:21.000 adding up, But I wasn't prepared to really do the 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:24.000 deep dive at that point under my you know, but 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.160 still the time my parents root, I wasn't in the 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:30.240 proximity of my parents ready to do that diving a 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:32.959 cigarette like, well, then who am I if I am 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:36.920 not the daughter of both of my parents. Lacy goes 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.880 off to college and begins to try on her new identity, 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.760 living in what she describes as a racial closet. She 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:46.400 doesn't say a word to her mother, she doesn't say 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:49.200 a word to her father. It isn't until she's been 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:52.360 away from home for her entire freshman year that she 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.320 broaches the subject with her mother for the first time. 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:58.199 So I went to my mother and was life with 0:10:58.280 --> 0:10:59.840 then I wanted as a truth, like why do I 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.120 the way I did, and my mother, as she tends to, 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:05.480 kind of comes in haunt and took a whisle me 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:07.640 pushing her for her to finally kind of sit down 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:10.760 and really have the conversation about what occurred around me 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:13.800 being conceived and how likely it was that my father 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:19.360 was not my biological boma. So by the time I 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:22.880 found out and really fundamentally again, it was more a 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:27.079 confirmation process than it was a revelatory process, because by 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:29.400 the time I went to my mother and stop to her, 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:32.559 I was ready just to have the imformation firm so 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:35.800 I could confirm my own identity and be able to 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:40.040 figure out who I was. Lacy's mother does not want 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:43.480 to talk about it. At first, she denies it, but 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:46.679 eventually she tells Lazy the truth her mom had had 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.199 a long affair was an African American man named Rodney, 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:53.160 a friend of the family that Lacy has known growing 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:55.920 up and who Lacy resembles to such a point that 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:58.640 friends have pointed it out, and so kind of at 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:02.599 that point she shared the information and shared what is 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:05.760 basically outline it. It's not that she had had a 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.520 relationship with my biological father, and there was a very 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:10.560 good chance that I was to his child, and for me, 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.200 I mean again, based on the side that I really 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:17.199 physically looked fairly somewhere at him, it seemed pretty obvious 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.319 what the truth was. Once Lazy has the truth of 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:23.839 her identity confirmed, you'd think she'd pay her dad a 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:27.520 visit go talk to him. Lazy's mom tells her that 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:30.720 the two of them have never discussed it. My parents 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:32.640 never talked about the truth to this day. They haven't 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:35.840 actually really pull out had a conversation about the truth 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:38.240 for a long time, obviously because my mother. But now 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:40.400 at this point, my father guys made it clear to 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:42.240 her that he doesn't want to sit down and talk 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:43.760 it out, that he just doesn't want to talk to 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:45.960 her about it. And they had never had a moment 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:50.040 with each other when you were born or in your childhood. 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:54.880 There wasn't that when when he moved out, like when 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:56.760 they were pretty much in the processive him moving out. 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.880 One one moment he said, you know, I know, Lazy 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.679 not my biological child, and the point her, you know, 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:05.840 she cried and cried and said I'm sorry, I'm sorry, 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:08.120 But they didn't actually have a competition like that was 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:13.320 the expect of the competition. How long after the hemming 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:16.080 and hawing with your mother and then finally her admitting 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:18.760 to you that it was possible. How long before you 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:22.800 then ended up speaking with your father about it? A decade? 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:37.000 A decade? We're going to pause for a moment. You know, 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:39.720 Sometimes I wonder what I would have done if I 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:41.600 had found out the truth about me and my dad 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:45.360 while he was still alive. Now it's easy for me 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:47.480 to wish I could talk to him, to wish I 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:50.440 could ask him what he suspected or whether he flat 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:53.640 out new and if he did know whether it mattered. 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:57.079 But would I have been able to sit my father down, 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:00.240 look him in the eye and have that moment into 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:05.679 saying I am not your biological daughter. For me, I 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:09.400 think it was really about living for a long time 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:14.000 in fear that if I spoke the truth about my race, 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:17.840 which was directly linked to my fraternity, that I would 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.600 be at risk of losing my father, And so I 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:23.360 always telling my father was my father, and I was 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:26.440 scared of losing him, And it took me a while 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:32.480 to come to accept that I actually only now realized 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:35.000 that I probably was never really at risk of losing him, 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:39.320 But I actually had to accept that I had to 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:43.200 be willing to move forward regardless of the potential of 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:47.080 losing him, because I couldn't live my life under these 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:49.920 secrets and be able to move for with my life 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.680 in a healthy manner. And then after I was came 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.640 to that realization and acceptance and actually didn't move forward, 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:00.960 I came to realize that when I kind of sent 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:04.080 my own boundaries and owned my own truth, that in fact, 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:08.400 my father was fundamentally still going to be there. Like 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:10.400 I literally thought there one or two things was going 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:12.760 to happen. Either he and I were going to totally 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.760 like sit down and working all out beyond the same page, 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:17.640 or we were going to have nothing to do with 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:20.440 each other. And I didn't realize that there was a 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:22.920 middle ground between those two, that we could actually have 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:26.600 live our own separate realities but still being in each 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:30.440 other's lives, which is what exact happened. And it also 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:33.680 took me a while to really accept the fact that 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:36.160 nobody except for me was going to actually bring up 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:39.640 these conversations that in and of itself was something I 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:41.800 had to come to terms with. It's like why won't 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:44.280 they whether it was like send the family and my father, 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.240 why don't think forward was having the conversation but realizing that, 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:50.120 you know, this is my life and I couldn't be 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:52.120 a victim within my own life, and so if this 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:53.920 was something I needed to do, I needed to take 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:59.240 responsibility and do it. The discovery of such a massive 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:02.400 secret that was always hiding in plain sight is one thing. 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:07.720 The work of metabolizing it is another. It isn't easy 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:10.840 to digest a new truth about yourself that changes the 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:14.920 very nature of your identity, and in Lacey's case, this 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.120 is complicated by the fact that there's a politicized racial 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:22.400 identification going on. She has to reconcile being black with 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:25.560 a lifetime of believing she was white. She has to 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:27.880 come to an understanding of what it means to be 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:32.120 both black and Jewish. If you think about it, identity 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:34.840 is usually something that we're born with and grow into, 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:39.680 but what about when it isn't so. Lacey embarks on 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:43.560 making her documentary first thinking that she's going to explore 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:48.400 dual identity, what she calls two iconic identities, being black 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:52.360 and being Jewish, But as she begins working on the film, 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:55.360 she realizes that while it's a good idea. She doesn't 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.160 quite know what the story is until she realizes that 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:03.680 she and her family is the story. And one of 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:06.000 the things I think is most interesting about this is 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:10.240 that the art form Lazy chooses film is a visual, clear, 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:13.320 direct medium, one in which Lacey would be pointing the 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:17.000 camera at her parents who never ever wanted to talk 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:21.560 about this, and essentially pushed them to talk. Like, you 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:23.520 didn't make an opera out of it. You make a 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:25.120 book out of it. You to make a play out 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:27.119 of it, or a poem out of it, or a 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:30.560 podcast out of it. You made a film. It's like, 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:32.840 in a way, what it feels like to me is 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:35.399 you were saying, I'm going to pin this down as 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:38.040 much as it can be pinned down, because it wasn't 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:42.159 pinned down for all of those years. It really is 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:44.959 like a coming out product. You know. I had literally 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:47.639 lived in regi Ploset where it was out and about 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:50.399 in my world and kind of you know, identifying a 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:52.080 certain way that I would come home and I with 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:54.320 whitewash and my existence and I would tell France, you know, 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:57.879 remember my we don't talk about me being black at 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:01.760 home from the just I had to live it and 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:05.840 therefore capturing the living of it. Just made sense to 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:08.720 me just to go through it and just hold myself 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:12.000 accountable to really not only living through it, but then 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:15.160 actually going back and processing it. And this just felt 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:17.359 like the way that made the most soundsels I was 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:21.040 really living out experience, and doing a documentary was really 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:23.719 capturing what was happening in real time at that moment. 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.520 Right Also, it gives you permission and forces you in 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:31.240 a certain way to ask the tough questions to go there, 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:34.080 to keep your mother in the chair, to have that conversation, 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:36.720 to have that conversation with your father um which no 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:39.560 other art form would afford you. Until I uncovered my 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:42.240 family's secrets, I was never going to learn to live 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:44.679 with my joy identity being black and Jewish, and I 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:47.359 was never going to be able to internally integrate my 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.600 identities until I was willing to go through the process 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:57.240 of moving past my family secrets. I suppose that it's 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.720 core this is a story about the extraordinary a capacity 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:03.440 that we human beings have to believe what we want 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:07.080 to believe, to bury our own secrets, even from ourselves, 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.760 and at the same time the capacity we also have 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:14.919 to shed those secrets to move past them and become 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:21.119 holy ourselves. You now have five year old twins, is 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:24.920 that right? So in your family life, how does being 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:28.240 black and Jewish play into the way that you think 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:32.040 about raising your kids and dual identity and is this 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:34.280 kind of an ongoing story in a way for you 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.960 part of what you think about as a mom as 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:40.119 having kids of your own now totally, I mean, I 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.680 think I'm infertan ways. I think I'm very typical, which 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.399 is that like identified with the Jewish, I've always practiced 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.520 in my own way my whole life. But now I'm 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:50.720 figuring out what that means in my family and my husband, 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:53.680 who was raised in Baptist Church. We are raising the 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:56.240 kids Jewish, but we're figuring out what that means, you know, 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:58.480 my husband is not Jewish. But also to know who 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:00.040 they are on every piece of it. I mean, I 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:02.679 think that for us the thing that helps us that 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.639 our world are not divided in that space. Like my 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:08.200 in law is even expressed, you know interest in coming 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:10.760 to synagogue. We have a church with them on some 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:12.919 of the big holidays. I think that you know, we 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:15.199 wanted to know who they are completely and totally, but 0:20:15.240 --> 0:20:17.560 we're still figuring it out. I mean, I think everybody 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:25.920 is figuring out. Previously, when I wasn't like kind of 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:28.159 speaking my truth and owning and and I hadn't had 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:30.440 the conversation with my family, I lived with a lot 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:33.560 of anxiety about things being revealed. And you can see 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:36.439 some of those moments within the film and the tension 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:38.840 that I was living with and I don't live with 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.400 them anymore. That is actually gone from my life, that 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:45.080 that anxiety has been relieved, And so there are a 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:47.879 very physical difference in terms of how I lived my 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:50.320 life now and how I was putting it before, Like 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:55.600 the apprehension and anxiety around this secret being will be 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:59.680 able to talk about our reference is now gone, and 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:11.720 I feel that physical difference. I'd like to thank my 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.959 guest Lacey Schwartz for sharing her story with us today. 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:18.399 You can find out more about her documentary at Little 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:23.000 White Lie. The film dot com. Family Secrets is an 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:26.720 I Heart Media production. Dylan Fagan is a supervising producer, 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:30.520 Andrew Howard and Tristan McNeil are the audio engineers, and 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:34.200 Julie Douglas is the executive producer. If you have a 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:36.560 family Secret, you'd like to share. You can get in 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:39.960 touch with us at listener mail at Family Secrets Podcast 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:43.400 dot com, and you can also find us on Instagram 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:47.720 at Danny Writer, and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod and 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:51.760 Twitter at fam Secrets Pod. That's FAMI Secret Spot. For 0:21:51.880 --> 0:22:00.840 more about my book, Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot com