'Little White Lie' airs on PBS tonight
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Lacey Schwartz grew up in Woodstock, N.Y., a mostly white, middle-class community. But even as a child she sometimes questioned why her deeper skin tone and curly hair didn't look like every one else in her family. Her parents, who are white and Jewish, explained that her inherited looks came from a Sicilian grandfather with darker features and coarse hair.
"I grew up in a world of synagogue, Hebrew school, bar mitzvahs," she says. "My family knew who they were and they defined who I was. So it never occurred to me that I was passing. I actually grew up believing I was white."
That family secret: her mother had carried on an longstanding affair that began before she was even married, an affair with a black man. He was actually Schwartz's biological father. Schwartz's mother Peggy says fear is what kept her from revealing the truth for so long.
Schwartz was accepted as an African-American student based on the photo she included with her application, even though she hadn't checked a box marking her race. So for the first time, while away from home and family, she found herself in a circle of black friends.
