Lenny Kravitz embraced being both black and Jewish, which defined who he was

Lenny Kravitz is black and Jewish, and that dichotomy has meant a lot in his life. In our Masters of the Game interview, he talked about how he was often teased as a toddler for not being fully either side. “I grew up with kids, and I’m sure you have, too, who didn’t know how to deal with it because they thought they had to fit into one or the other,” he said. – And we haven’t got to suit into both.

Kravitz says his family advised him to rise above it. He said he was taught “to accept all that you are and to honor all that you are and to know that if you have different elements, it’s a gift, that you can draw from different cultures, different things and different aspects of yourself. It gives you more opportunities to work and a greater understanding that we are all truly one. We are all the same. We all come from the same source. So I think having that mix is ​​wonderful.”

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But Kravitz had a very powerful example of being pleased with who you might be in your individual home. His mother, actress Roxie Roker, was a part of the primary interracial couple shown on television when she starred in “The Jeffersons”, one in all the best television series of the late Seventies. “The Jeffersons” focused on George Jefferson and his wife Louise, aka Weezy, who were a part of the black upper class at a time when there have been few of them within the country and none on television . Roker’s character, Helen Willis, lived near the Jeffersons and appeared in almost every episode. Helena’s husband was white. Her character helped normalize interracial relationships within the media and helped Kravitz feel higher.

Kravitz proudly told me the story of how Roker got the job – the show’s creator, Norman Lear, asked her if she can be comfortable playing a personality who had a white husband. Kravitz said Lear said, “Now listen, I just want to talk to you about this because I need to make sure you’re comfortable. Because you’re going to, you know, hug and kiss this man. I don’t know how you’ll feel about kissing a white man. She pulled out a photo of her husband. He was a white man. Lear said, “I’ll see you on Monday.”