Racial Identity Development in "Little White Lie" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Didactics - English - History of Literature, Eras, grade: 1,0, University of Bremen, language: English, abstract: This paper focuses on the documentary "Little White Lie", following Lacey Schwartz in her journey of finding her own racial identity. It examines how Lacey Schwartz's racial identity develops throughout her life, as depicted in the film. Furthermore, it will be examined in how far Cross' and Helms' theories apply to Schwartz' racial development.

Who am I? For many of us, it is an easy question to answer. We know our identity is based on our family members, especially our parents, how we look like, how people are reflecting back at us, what they see based on their knowledge of identity. We live in a society that makes us want to belong to a certain group, religion, gender, ethnicity and so on. But what about not being fully categorizable into one "box"? What about being more than one or two categories? Lacey Schwartz wonders about her own identity in her film "Little White Lie". Because of a lie, she is torn between her perfect white Jewish family and her mother's affair with a black man who turns out to be her father. This discovery is her turning point in life which ultimately throws her into a family but most importantly into an identity crisis.

But what exactly is an identity? Different fields such as cultural studies, sociology, and psychology deal with this question. There are more than enough theories about what identity can be, and how it works for us. One aspect they have in common is that many factors determine what we see as part of our identity. In the US American context, race plays an important role, and scholars such as William Cross and Janet Helms have developed their own theories as to how a person's racial identity evolves. Beverly Daniel Tatum further emphasizes that part of who we are is how others see us.