U.S. Congressman Antonio Delgado: Race and Identity in Politics

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: “We all have doubts. We all have been in rooms where we say, “Do I belong here?” Or, “Am I smart enough to be here?” Or, “Am I working hard enough?” I think every person can locate that type of experience. And there might be some reasons for that, that one could argue are appropriate. But I don’t believe race should ever be a reason for that.

PORTER BRASWELL: From HBR Presents, this is Race at Work – the show where we explore how race affects our careers and our lives. I’m Porter Braswell. I left a Wall Street career to start a company called Jopwell because I wanted to help corporate America build a more diverse workforce. Each week, we talk to a different leader about their journey with race, equity, and inclusion. These are the conversations we don’t usually have at work. But this show is a safe place to share and learn from each other.

When Antonio Delgado was running for Congress in 2018, his race made national headlines. A New York Times article from the election reads: “He’s a Rhodes Scholar. The GOP Keeps Calling Him a ‘Big-City Rapper.’” Race-baiting attack ads portrayed him as an outsider and a threat. The congressman, who is Black, is the first person of color to represent his rural district in upstate New York, where the population is 90 percent white. I’m excited to share this conversation because I think there’s so much we can learn from Congressman Delgado about engaging with race at work and working across differences to find common ground. OK, let’s get into it.

So let’s talk about some of the hidden obstacles. From an outsider’s perspective, you are truly one of the most accomplished and successful people that I personally know, and your background has led you through incredibly prestigious institutions, whether that’s at Colgate for your undergrad, or going to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, or Harvard Law, then joining one of the most prestigious law firms in the country, and now the U.S. Congress. So some people will look at you and say, “Oh, you probably had a different path,” or “You didn’t experience some of the things that most Black Americans experience because you’ve been able to get to where you are.” Can you break down some of those hidden challenges that you have faced, and how you were able to overcome them?

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: I mean, I’ll just say, it’s interesting you didn’t mention my time between law school and my legal career, which was my time as a hip hop artist, which I spent five years after law school, much to the surprise of my family and a number of my friends. And I only bring that up because one of the things that, for me, and I can only speak to my own experience, but in my world, growing up, and the culture that I come from, the history, knowing our legacy, knowing the struggle that we have carried as an African American people, that was very much my upbringing, and it was a part of my life. And so it came through in music, whether it ultimately was, it started off with gospel, and then into R&B, and then ultimately into hip hop, but it also came through in sort of the cultural norms: respecting your elders, only speaking when spoken to. Things that when you go to someone’s home, Mr. and Mrs., never first names. That is how I was raised, and I grew up in the church, in a predominantly African American Baptist church. And so that was also steeped in the traditions of our overcoming, our struggle. And so when you ask about the hidden obstacles, I think what I’m trying to get at here is as I became of age and anchored myself in this culture and identified myself in this way, this is the air that I breathed in, it also became clear to me that I was coming of age in a world that had a history, at least, of associating inferiority with that. And you can call that a hidden obstacle, because it lives inside of your head. It’s called doubt. We all have doubts. We all have been in rooms where we say, “Do I belong here?” Or, “Am I smart enough to be here?” Or, “Am I working hard enough?” I think every person can locate that type of experience. And there might be some reasons for that, that one could argue are appropriate. But I don’t believe race should ever be a reason for that, or the person’s color. And so as you elevate or grow or find more success in society, you do feel sometimes that doubt creeping in. And it’s important that you own it for what it is, and call it out, and overcome it. But I would call that the hidden obstacle, and that is the critical component that we have to unpack from a psychological standpoint in terms of overcoming the challenges that racism in America presents.

PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. Well, you know, on the back of that, I’ll share a personal story, because I have found myself in incredibly prestigious institutions, whether it was a boarding school or going to Yale or working in finance, and I always had to work twice as hard and be twice as good as the next person to get into those opportunities, and very oftentimes I was “the only” in the room. And I distinctly remember coming home, and I grew up in a very suburban, white town in New Jersey, and I remember coming home one winter for Christmas break my freshman year, and my nextdoor neighbor at a Christmas party asked me what school I went to, and I said I went to Yale. And their first question, without them flinching, was “What sport do you play?” And it was shocking to this person that I could go to Yale. Now, as it so happens, I played basketball. I was also a great student, I was very well-rounded, and I chose Yale out of many schools because I wanted to be more than an athlete. And it was that person’s attempt to make me lesser than by asking me, “What sport do you play?”

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: Right, and I’m not even sure if I would necessarily say that that person was trying to make you lesser than. I think that person had, just like you had absorbed a certain atmospheric pollutant, they too had absorbed one, and it’s called stereotypes. It’s called prejudices that have lived in our collective consciousness for far too long. And I will point out as well, I made that observation about twice as hard. My mom and my dad would always tell me, “You’re going to have to work twice as hard.” And you could see that as a bit of a curse to some degree, but the same time it’s a gift in the sense that it pushes you. It does push you, and it drives you. And I can certainly say that it put work ethic in me that now, as an adult, I feel incredibly confident about. Now as an adult, I look around and I say, “Oh yeah, okay, I’ve certainly got the hours in.” I know what it means to work hard, and I know that no one, really, is going to be able to outwork me, right? You’re not going to be able to outwork me, and there is a quiet confidence that comes along with that feeling.

PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. You’ve taken your experiences and you’ve turned it into your superpower, and that’s a very powerful place to be.

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: No, it is. And I do want to make this point because I think it’s important. That’s the positive side of the coin, right? And that can happen, and I like to think that I’ve been blessed and fortunate enough, fortunate enough to land on that side of the coin. But the other side of the coin can also happen, where you don’t have the support mechanisms in place or you don’t have the good fortune to come in contact with the right people to get you what you need or to give you the support or the confidence you need over time. And when you look at what’s been done to homes and communities, by virtue of practices like redlining, for example, you can’t subscribe this to personal pathologies. These are the legacies, the structural realities that persist that can make it incredibly challenging, no matter how hard you work to overcome.

PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. So let’s go back to 2018, your first political campaign for Congress in New York’s 19th district, which is, for listeners, it’s rural, upstate New York. So what were some of the tactics that your opponent used to undermine your credibility?

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: Well, it goes back to the stereotypes. I grew up in Schenectady, and the messaging of the ad campaign against me was to paint me as something or someone who wasn’t from this place, who wasn’t of the community. And it’s interesting because remember how I flagged for you my time in hip hop, well, that was exactly what was sought to be exploited, right? That piece of my narrative. You listed off a bunch of different pieces, like Colgate, you mentioned Rhodes, law school, and then talking about my legal career, but the thing that they focused on, the piece that was elevated to focus on was my five years in music because the assumption was that there were biases and prejudices and stereotypes about what it means to be involved in hip hop culture that they could exploit to people who were susceptible to that. And so notions of Black masculinity, criminality, violence, these are the kind of things that people who were advocating or who were putting out these campaigns were hoping to conjure up in people when they perceive me, that I couldn’t be of this place, that I was somehow an outside force, a threat, a threat to this community. And this is a very rural, I think it’s the third-most rural seat of any Democrat in Congress, and the eight-most rural in the entire country, and it’s nearly 90 percent white. But the fact of the matter is because we got out in the district, because we connected with folks and met them where they were, and we listened, and we led with our hearts, and spoke from a place of genuine care, that we were able to cut through the noise and pop the bubbles that were being manufactured from outside forces. That gives me a lot of hope.

PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. Were you anticipating that level of attention placed on race?

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: I knew that because I had a career in music that if somebody wanted to stoke racial animus and do so in a way that they felt was most expedient, then taking a picture of me where I have a hood on the album cover and splattering it all over the TV with the hopes that that’s going to incite fear in people is one way that they could do that. So it wasn’t that I was naïve or I thought, “No, they would never do this,” but I knew, though, that if I stay true to who I am and connecting with, and didn’t run from who I am, either. Didn’t try to dismiss who I am or dilute it, I talked about things in my music that I still talk about to this day. And making it about the fact that my music was about justice, it was about economic equality. I rapped about climate change. It was funny, at one point the Washington Post wrote a story during the height of the election, and I’ll never forget this quote. One of their reporters was in essence reviewing some of my lyrics, and the word that was chosen to review my lyrics was wonky. And you know what? That was legitimate insight, because if you were to go back and listen to some of my music, it was very numbers-driven. I had a lot of stats, I was talking about unemployment, relative unemployment rates, income gaps, I was talking about greenhouse gases, carbon emissions, I was talking about things that, I was taking everything I had learned, and trying to put it in this art form because I thought that that was a way for me to make the art form more political. That was, for me, at that point in my life, that felt more authentic for me in terms of trying to bring about political change.

PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. Well, let’s shift to your time in Congress. How did you expect race to come into play in your work, and how does that compare with the reality, now that you’re there?

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: Well, you got to understand, I see myself by virtue of who I am, bringing a different orientation, a different perspective to the table. And I feel very blessed and humbled by the opportunity, particularly in these incredibly divisive and partisan times, where race really has come to the forefront in the post-George Floyd, murder of George Floyd, you see what’s happening across the country and sort of the call for some type of action. I feel very blessed to be in this role, serving the district that I represent, and being who I individually am. And I never want to lose sight of the responsibility of the uniqueness of my position, and how I can extract the most value that I possibly can from the uniqueness of my position. And I think what I’ve learned as a member of Congress is when you serve, you are serving your community. You’re not serving your interests, right? I have interests, I have passions. But the first order of business is serving my community. And my identity, who I am, will certainly inform how I serve the community, and hopefully it’ll do so in a way that is unique to me, and it’ll be incredibly helpful to the community, but more than anything it’s about making sure that I am doing the job, doing the actual job.

PORTER BRASWELL: Well, do you find that you have added responsibilities that your white peers don’t share?

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: Well, I don’t know if I would put it that way. I think people expect me, as a person of color, to focus on race in America. And they don’t expect, right, other of my colleagues at times to have that same focus. I don’t run away from that expectation. I’m not saying that I, woe is me. No, I embrace it, but I do think that it’s revealing that we all don’t share in that expectation. I think we all need to embrace that work, and I think what’s really encouraging about the time we’re in right now and what we saw in America with the multiracial, cross-generational movements after we lost George Floyd was that it wasn’t about just Black and brown people calling for justice. This was white people, brown people, Black people – it was everybody, who–

PORTER BRASWELL: Which is why it felt different–

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: Exactly. And that’s the space we have to live in for change to really happen. It can’t just be, “Oh, well, you’re the first person of color to represent upstate New York, so whenever there’s an issue of race that comes up, we’re going to direct this question to you.” I’ll happily take on that issue because I feel a responsibility to do so, and I’m not shirking from that responsibility. But I also feel a responsibility to point out, why am I the only person being asked the question? We’ve got to broaden that. This is an American issue, not a Black American issue.

PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. Walk me and the listeners through what it was like to meet Congressman John Lewis before he passed. What did you learn from him, what did that feel like, what was it like to be in his presence?

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: He was larger than life. If you recall, I said my family raised me steeped in the history and the culture, particularly around the Civil Rights Movement. When I think back to my childhood, I remember on the coffee tables, these big picture books that showed all the marches and talking about the different leaders and I remember Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s face being spread out on all these covers. That was all over my house. And so knowing the history and knowing where we come from, and you learn about these people, you read about them, and they’re heroes. They’re our heroes, they’re American heroes, they’re icons. And you know John Lewis marched with Dr. King, right there by his side. And Dr. King, in my house, you know, I mean, it was Jesus, it was Dr. King. And I’ll tell you one little story. So we went to Selma, Alabama, he has a pilgrimage he does. He takes the delegation, bipartisan delegation there every year. He used to, that was what he did, and everybody would clamor to go. And my first term, Lacey, my wife and I went there. Got to cross over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which we all know is where the site of Bloody Sunday happened, which ultimately led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. He got his skull bashed in on that bridge, and we got to cross over with him on that bridge, which was a powerful moment. But on that same trip, okay, on that same trip, we are heading back to DC, and we’re all in a bus, and if you know about the Freedom Rides and his role in that, it’s quite poetic to be on a bus with him as we’re sitting on the tarmac waiting for a rainstorm to pass to board a plane to go back to DC. I’m sitting next to Lacey, and she looks up about a few rows up and she sees that he’s sitting by himself. There’s an empty seat next to him, and she says to me, “You might want to go take that seat.” And I said, “Absolutely.” So I get up while we’re on this tarmac waiting for the rain to pass and plane to come. I sit next to him, and we have a good 15, 20-minute conversation. Just the two of us, on this bus, and the rain is pouring, and it was as if the entire world had stopped, and it was just the two of us by ourselves. And I asked him as much as I could possibly ask him in that 15, 20 minutes. But I really focused a lot on what drove him, what drove Dr. King, what was the source of their resiliency? How do you keep bouncing back? And not just bouncing back, but bouncing back with love in your heart? With peace on your mind? No anger, no hostility, just love and peace. And he was a prophet, he spoke like a prophet. He didn’t use a lot of words, but you could hear the earnestness, and that’s the key. The earnestness in his voice, he was so earnest. And you knew he believed every single word that he said. And he said to me, “You got to keep the faith, you got to be bold, and you always got to love. You got to keep loving.” And I could still hear those words to this day, like he was right here in this room. I mean, it was so powerful. So you hit a nerve with that because out of all my experiences in my first term in Congress, that was one that I will hold dear for the rest of my life.

PORTER BRASWELL: I have chills. That’s incredible. It’s moments like that that make life, life – that makes it worth living. And for you to have two sons and to be able to share that moment, and recount that moment with them and to have your wife present for something like that.

You have incredible experiences before working in Congress, and obviously throughout your time within Congress. What are some of the things that you’ve learned along your journey that corporate American can take and make their workforces more inclusive, more inspiring, building cultures where people feel like they can bring their authentic selves. What are some of the lessons you’ve learned that you think translate into corporate America?

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: That’s a great question, and not an easy one to answer. I think community, a sense of community, is important – a sense of togetherness. It goes back to those feelings of doubt that I referenced. And it could be isolating in corporate America if you’re a person of color. I can recall certain experiences that I had when I was practicing law, when I was engaging with partners, who I knew genuinely had love for me and who cared for me but would say things at times or would use certain words that would make me feel a certain way and make me feel less than. And again, I don’t necessarily think that they knew what they were doing. And so the community piece is important because when you have an environment where someone can turn around and say, “I don’t think you meant to say this in this way, but I think it’s important for me to share with you why it made me feel uncomfortable.” That’s important, and it’s a welcoming environment, it’s an honest environment. And it’s not about putting people on edge or making people feel like they have to be accounted for everything they say. It’s just about a culture of communication. It’s really a culture of communication. It’s so important to be able to talk through these things and be able to talk through them in ways that it’s not about judging anybody. It’s just about reconciliation. You got to reconcile, and you can’t know what you’re reconciling if you don’t know the different parts at play. And I know a lot of people that I worked with in corporate America who just felt so isolated that they just had to move on. They couldn’t find that space within the culture itself to, I don’t even want to use the word vent, but just express themselves.

PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. Does anything come to mind in terms of a specific story where you’ve experienced somebody’s ignorance in the context of working at a law firm or even potentially with your colleagues now in Congress, where they unintentionally tried to make you feel smaller? Does anything come to mind for you?

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: I’ll never forget when I was practicing law, there was a tense moment happening around a deposition. I was the junior associate on the case, and so I was responsible for pulling together all of the different exhibits, which it’s a big task, you got to make sure everything is right so when the partner calls out what he’s looking for, everything is there. Long story short, there was some issues happening with the technology and conferencing people in, which I really had nothing to do with but because I was in the role that I was in, it didn’t really matter, right? You just got to go with the punches. And I’m fine with that and I was fine with that and I expected that. But there are certain words that can trigger feelings in tense situations. And at one point when we were trying to work through the situation, the partner had said, he used the word “boy.” And in retrospect, I don’t think he used that word, I know he didn’t use that word because he was trying to dig at me. I could see him just as well saying that to another associate who wasn’t of color. The way he said it, it didn’t feel, to me, like he was trying to hurt my feelings or make me feel uncomfortable. But just by virtue of saying it in that particular moment triggered for me feelings, right? It triggered for me a certain feeling of inferiority because that word by itself, and knowing the weight of that word, particularly in that context where you’re one of only a handful to begin with, there’s just weight to it. And I remember that feeling, and I remember also meditating on the fact. That was a very eye-opening experience for myself, because I had to wrestle with my own feelings. I had to wrestle with, okay, how do I overcome my own internal demons, too? You know, it’s one of those teachable moments that I think back on and I ponder and I think to myself that there’s a lot to unpack in that moment, right? And you ideally want to be in an environment where it can be unpacked, right? It can be unpacked. And that’s the work that I think is important. And that’s a very small, there’s I think a lot of bigger, more institutional, systemic realities, right? We’re talking about intangible stuff, which is very important, don’t get me wrong, and we have to heal internally. But there are real structural realities that I’d be remiss to not at least acknowledge as real forces in play that are harmful to people, whether it’s the air we breathe, the water we drink, the communities we live in, the schools our children are being taught in, the hospitals, the access to care, all of that, these are real, tangible, concrete realities that people are being asked to endure, and so there’s the internal and then there’s the external as well.

PORTER BRASWELL: So the structural things are obviously important and there are things that need to be discussed. The benefit of it being structural is that it’s acknowledged. Being called a “boy” in the context of work are things that people don’t talk about, and when you’re called a “boy,” there’s a lot behind that. And that takes away from you, it makes you lesser than, it makes you … Regardless if you feel it internally, it’s the reality, and then it’s hard to show up and be your best self and produce, and it’s going to affect your work. And it’s those conversations that need to be had so people are aware that that’s not okay, in any context, to address somebody like that. So I appreciate you sharing that story.

So this is my final question, and it’s a question that I ask all of our guests. Should race be discussed at work?

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: Well, that’s kind of what we’ve been, I would say, suggesting. I don’t know if it’s, let’s tee up race for a daily conversation. But I do think that, and this goes to the point that we’ve been talking about, when race is manifesting itself, unintentionally or intentionally, and people feel uncomfortable as a result. And to your point, it can affect productivity, right? It can affect how you perform. I think it is important that these discussions happen and that there’s a space for those conversations, but I think everything we’re talking about boils down to, in the first instance, there being real leadership in this space. Not just within corporate America, or not just within any type of industry. We need a collective conversation, we need a nationwide conversation that doesn’t ground itself in the partisan ideological divides, that is committed to just trying to unearth the truth and holding ourselves accountable to the facts, and seeing how the legacy of racial oppression continues to have an effect on people’s lives day in and day out. And we can either choose to subscribe that phenomenon to some notion of Black inferiority, which I know the vast majority of Americans don’t subscribe to. Or we can say the reason why there’s the wealth gap, and the wealth of white American families is 10 times that of African Americans, or the reason why Black women are suffering from prenatal care or lack thereof, and have three times the risk of pregnancy-related deaths compared to white women, or the reason why the percentage of Black children living below poverty line is three times that of white children has to do with the legacy of slavery, the legacy of the Black Codes, the legacy of the Jim Crow era, the legacy of redlining that happened from 1930s through the 1960s. And so we have to account for these realities, and again, it’s not to point fingers or to blame anybody, it’s just to have an accounting, it’s to reconcile, it’s to get to the bottom of this, and we have to do that work. And if we have leadership that’s willing to do that, to elevate the conversation, for the greater good, for the whole of America, then that will trickle down, if you will, into our corporate culture. It’ll trickle down into our educational spaces, into our healthcare spaces, our nonprofit spaces. It’ll be of the collective psyche of the country. That’s, I think, hopefully where we’re trying to get to as a nation.

PORTER BRASWELL: Well, Congressman, I thank you for serving, I thank you for engaging in this conversation, and I thank you for being authentic. You are having impact on a lot of different communities, and your perspective is very much valued, so thank you for taking the time for being with us this afternoon, and I really appreciate the conversation.

CONGRESSMAN DELGADO: Well, listen man, I appreciate the conversation, I appreciate the platform that you’ve created, and I wish you nothing but the best, man.

PORTER BRASWELL: Awesome. Well, thank you.

That’s Congressman Antonio Delgado, from New York’s 19th Congressional District. This episode was produced by Amy Chyan and edited by Anne Saini. Thanks for listening to Race at Work – part of the HBR Presents network.