During her presentation, Schwartz Delgado showcased clips from her projects “Little White Lie” and “The Loving Generation”.
Andover kicked off its twelfth annual Mixed Heritage Awareness Week with keynote speaker Lacey Schwartz Delgado, award-winning producer, writer, and director of “Little White Lies” and “The Loving Generation,” last Friday. A co-founder of production company Truth Aid Media, she shared her path towards creating multimedia content for social change at All-School Meeting (ASM).
In her speech, Schwartz Delgado described how she discovered her biracial identity at age 18 after being raised as a white Ashkenazi in Woodstock, New York. Accepted to Georgetown University as a Black student before even knowing of her own African-American heritage, she explained how unconventional stories could be more common than expected.
“What is a good story? A good story is a crazy story, but also a relatable one. When I was working through my own situation, I realized that my story was [relatable]. Even though I had what I considered to be a more extreme identity issue, I was looking out into the world and I was seeing all these people, in their seventies [or] older, who are still reconciling their relationships with their parents and had still been working through these pieces of themselves. I hadn’t really come to terms with it. The patterns I was seeing out of the world were really fascinating and I felt like I could talk about those issues through this film,” said Schwartz Delgado during her presentation at ASM.
During ASM, Schwartz Delgado used multiple clips from “The Loving Generation,” a docuseries that highlights the lives of various mixed-race people born after the Supreme Court overturned laws against interracial marriage. Denys Tereshchenko ’26 mentioned how the interviews led him to reflect on the meaning of culture and community.
“The name ‘Loving Generation’ was so interesting, because the fact that that was an entire generation so influenced by one core decision, one event, is incredible to think about… Another thing that jumped out to me was the case of Barack Obama, because we think of him as the first Black president of the United States, but he’s actually mixed. What do we take from that? What do we take from our understanding from how we understand the first? Who claims what culture, what community claims who,” said Tereshchenko.
Schwartz Delgado also outlined the importance of using narration to build educated communities centered around acceptance of different perspectives. Chloe Nichols ’27 spoke about how Delgado’s speech was highly relatable, highlighting that the clips helped her see how others go through similar struggles.
“I would say this ASM really related to me, because as a mixed person, you usually don’t understand the perspectives that come with it. I really loved how she spoke about how different people identify more with one side versus another, and I truly believe that for me. I’m half Black, half Latino, but I identify more with my Latina side, so that’s the takeaway that I got… What helped me in a sense is seeing how others also have the same struggles as I [do], and that it wasn’t just me who felt like this,” said Nichols.
Sebastian Lemberger ’25 talked about the organization of the ASM. Although the videos and Delgado’s story were interesting to him, he pointed out that the videos, which are publicly available on YouTube, took up much of the ASM.
“I was surprised by how little she was actually talking and the fact that she spent the majority of her speech showing us publicly available YouTube videos. I really liked the videos, but my main gripe is that if they had just sent out the videos in an email, I would have watched them. I wanted to actually hear her speak, because her story sounded interesting… The clips, though, showed me how it is impossible to live life without certain imports of who you are. I learned a lot about how other people were attempting to balance the different parts of themselves,” said Lemberger.
Schwartz Delgado concluded her presentation with an incentive to ask ourselves questions about race and identity, even if they may appear difficult to tackle. Reflecting on the ASM, Bruce Ru ’28 emphasized the value of open dialogue and creating safe spaces.
“Sometimes it might be difficult to have those conversations. A lot of the time there’s some things that are very difficult to admit and very difficult to confront, but the cost of not confronting that can sometimes be even greater. The importance of creating that space, an environment where people can bravely ask questions and try to figure out who they really are, is very important,” said Ru.
