DiDi Delgado goes off course in Voices lecture

By: Maliha Memon

Staff Writer

Students were confused and bewildered when a Voices speaker gave her lecture titled “Why I don’t Help White People” on Wednesday, Nov. 6.

The event’s speaker was DiDi Delgado, a poet, educator and activist. The purpose of the lecture was to discuss creating an intersectional community. 

According to Delgado, this involves putting an emphasis on groups that are less privileged in terms of race, gender, sexuality and ability while removing attention and resources from groups that are white, male, straight, cisgender and/or able-bodied individuals.

“Alright they got me doing fancy s***,” Delgado opened. 

The lecture began 15 minutes late, but Delgado encouraged the audience to participate. 

To begin her speech, Delgado described a scenario in which an elementary student shares gum with another student. However, the teacher in the scenario points the gum sharing out and ends the interaction because there isn’t enough gum for everyone. 

Delgado said the students in the scenario should have been allowed to interact, but that it was never about the kid not bringing enough for everyone. The scenario was just about the teacher not wanting the kids to chew gum in class and using the amount of gum as an excuse.

  “So I forgot where I was going with this but I meant to say does anyone else have a piece of gum I can have?” Delgado said.

Delgado then explained her personal connection to slavery.

“The cost of college textbooks is more than how much my great great grandparents’ parents cost,” Delgado said.

According to Delgado, people who have bankers, insurance agents or investors in their family history were insuring black people when black people were considered property.

She continued, “It’s blood money.”

Delgado then began talking about communism. She used the concept of a barbecue to detail the importance of everyone being able to go to cookouts for free. 

According to Delgado, an entry fee would be an example of capitalism ruining something that should be available to everyone.

 “What we’re doing is running an underground anti-capitalist society on the internet by telling America go f- yourselves, we’re going to run this secret coalition to give each other free things,” Delgado said, describing a Facebook group she administers. “They’re a hyper local giving economy -and I think about how innocuous that is-it’s called Buy Nothing Albany.”

“Do you want to know what I called communism when I was younger?” Delgado said. “White people s***.”

She proceeded to ask the audience for examples of “white people s***.”

“Paying for welfare,” said Sean Moran, who was sitting in the back of the auditorium. “The top 1% of the country pays for 50% of the country.” 

Delgado said she didn’t think Moran was accurate.

“Why shouldn’t the top 1% be paying the most amount of money?” asked another student. 

According to Delgado, the most rich people expect labor to come from the poor, ill, disabled, as well as people who society considers inherently different.

“Thank you for calling out sh** when you see it,” Delgado told the second student.

When audience input stopped, Delgado complimented all those who participated, but specifically said she didn’t like Moran’s words.

Delgado mentioned a Facebook group she created called Done for DiDi.

“We’ve given away to date over $575,000 to black people who are in need and it doesn’t matter if you’re gender binary,” Delgado said.  “We just don’t give to men because I just feel like there’s a whole societal power structure there.” 

Another group Delgado said she is part of is Capital District Intersectional Feminists, which is connected to her Black Lives Matter work. 

“I led a march of 45,000 people across the Boston Commons to fight [against white] supremacy and it shut down 67 synchronized marches across the United States for white supremacists and nationalists,” said Delgado.

According to a divorced woman, Delgado has given people platforms and she speaks for many people. She said Delgado taught her that emotion does not invalidate your facts or the things you’re going through.

Another student said, “As a black queer person I feel like overall whiteness is a privilege that is underestimated to an extent.”

Anne Rappaport, library outreach specialist and organizer of the event, said the talk just strengthened the opinions she already had.

After the talk, Delgado posted to Twitter and said, “A white, able bodied, presumably cisgender heterosexual male student told me that the 1% pay for everything including people to be on welfare.”

Sean Moran, the student allegedly mentioned in the Tweet said, “Call me crazy for this, but if it wasn’t for those ancestors who were brought here for slavery, they wouldn’t be in the greatest country in the world and reap all the benefits.”