I think in casual speech at this point (at least in my experience) the two are used interchangeably. In professional or legal settings I'm sure the distinction matters more, but I feel like OP's usage here felt pretty natural to me even though it's not technically correct.
Well, the thing is… when you use a borrowed term from a dead language, in writing, it really sounds wrong to cultivated ears. I really had to double-check that sentence to see if I had parsed it wrongly. Not bragging, just saying.
They cannot be completely interchangeable:
“There are white people among us: i.e. me and my father” is totally different from “…: e.g. me and my father”.
In your text, you should rather say "e.g." (exempli gratia), which means "for instance", "for example".