Lacey Schwartz Delgado
Second Lady of New York State
Assumed role
May 25, 2022
Lieutenant GovernorAntonio Delgado
Preceded byCathleen Benjamin
Personal details
Born
Lacey Alexandra Schwartz

(1977-01-09) January 9, 1977
Spouse
Antonio Delgado
​
(m. 2011)​
Children2
EducationGeorgetown University (BA)
Harvard University (JD)
OccupationFilmmaker
Known forLittle White Lie

Lacey Schwartz Delgado (born January 9, 1977) is an American filmmaker who is the second lady of New York. She is married to the Lieutenant Governor of New York, Antonio Delgado. As a filmmaker, she is most notable for her 2015 PBS documentary Little White Lie.

Early life

Schwartz, the daughter of Robert and Peggy Schwartz, was raised Jewish in the community of Woodstock, New York. She did not check the racial identity box on her college admission form, but was admitted as a black student based on her photograph.[1] She was not aware that she was a biracial American and that Rodney Parker, an African American man, was her biological father until she confronted her mother in college.[2]

Career

In the PBS documentary, Little White Lie,[3][4] she tells the story about her unusual upbringing and how finally embracing her racial identity has brought her a modicum of peace. Lacey was raised to believe she was white and Jewish only to begin to question her lineage while in high school and college. This film tracks Lacey’s investigative journey into discovering the lies her family told her from a young age about who her biological father is. She had never considered her life to be "passing" but found a commonality with the people she met in the Black Student Alliance at Georgetown University. She went on to graduate from Harvard Law School, where she met her future husband Antonio Delgado.[5]

Her parents, whenever she questioned her identity growing up, had an answer that sufficed when she was still a child. The family album had pictures of her paternal ancestor, a Sicilian Jew who was of a very dark complexion.[6] When she entered college life, the looks she got from African-American friends led her to rethink how she had viewed herself and by the time she entered her thirties and began making the film, the truth had already come out. The family secret, an affair that her mother had with an African-American man, also led to the breakup of her parents' marriage when her father found out about the affair and affirmed what everyone else already knew, that she was the product of multi-racial heritage.[7]

She was born 10 years after the Supreme Court had made its ruling in the case of Loving v. Virginia, which held interracial marriage was legal and there was a spike in births of children born to parents who were black and white, the author Anna Holmes calling that cohort the "Loving Generation".[8]

Personal life

In 2011, Lacey married Antonio Delgado.[9] In November 2018, her husband was elected to represent New York's 19th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives and in 2022 has been serving as the Lieutenant Governor of New York appointed by governor Kathy Hochul.[10] She is the mother of identical twin boys[11] and lives in Dutchess County, New York.[12]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Jane Mulkerrins (July 12, 2015). "Meet the black woman raised to believe she was white". The Daily Telegraph.
  2. ↑ Dolsten, Josefin (November 6, 2018). "NY House candidate Antonio Delgado's wife opens up about couple's Jewish life". The Times of Israel. Retrieved May 9, 2019.
  3. ↑ Genetta M. Adams (March 22, 2015). "Little White Lie Documentary: Growing Up White Until a Family Secret Revealed She Was Not". The Root. Archived from the original on June 12, 2015. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Little White Lie". PBS. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  5. ↑ "Lacey Schwartz, Antonio Delgado". The New York Times. September 25, 2011. Archived from the original on June 13, 2015. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
  6. ↑ Lee, Felicia R. (August 1, 2014). "'Little White Lie,' Lacey Schwartz's Film About Self-Discovery". The New York Times. Retrieved May 9, 2019.
  7. ↑ Marissa Charles. "'I was living in a racial closet': Black filmmaker Lacey Schwartz on growing up white". Salon.com. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  8. ↑ Anna Holmes (February 10, 2018). "Black With (Some) White Privilege". The New York Times. p. SR1.
  9. ↑ "Lacey Schwartz, Antonio Delgado: Weddings". The New York Times. September 25, 2011. Retrieved October 20, 2018.
  10. ↑ "Jewish filmmaker is now New York's second lady". The Forward. May 3, 2022.
  11. ↑ "Lacey Schwartz". Stone Fox Bride. February 17, 2017.
  12. ↑ "Little White Lie: Lacey Schwartz Uproots Her Family Tree". PBS. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
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