‘White as the Driven Snow’: Mom Exposes ‘Muslim Latina’ Activist Daughter as a Race Faker
“I’m German and British, and her father was Calabrese Italian.”
Progressive Muslim Latina activist Raquel Evita Saraswati is the Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) chief equity, inclusion and culture officer.
AFSC is a far-left Quaker group known for its “progressive values and social justice advocacy.”
Saraswati has quite the resume and racked up awards:
…served as chair of the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission on LGBT Affairs until joining AFSC in June of 2021, having been appointed by Mayor Kenney to the Commission in 2017. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
Raquel was awarded “Woman of the Year” by the Philadelphia chapter of the National Organization for Women and “Rad Girl of the Year” by Rad Girls, Inc. Philadelphia Magazine named her the city’s “Liaison for the Marginalized” in its “New Look of Power” issue.
Well…Saraswati’s mom Carol Perone outed her daughter as a fake to The Intercept. Her name is Rachel Elizabeth Seidel:
“I call her Rachel,” Perone told The Intercept, when reached by telephone. “I don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing.”
Saraswati, her mother added, is of British, German, and Italian descent — not Latina, South Asian, or Arab. “I’m as white as the driven snow and so is she,” added Perone, who also shared with The Intercept photos of Saraswati as a child. In the photos, which the mother asked not be published, Saraswati’s complexion is significantly lighter than the bronzed look in more recent photographs. Perone also shared with The Intercept her Ancestry.com profile and a photo of Saraswati’s biological father, who is deceased. Another relative who asked not to be identified confirmed that Saraswati is white.
Perone noted that her daughter converted to Islam in high school and that at some point she seemed to have felt the need to portray herself as having a different ethnic identity.
“I’m German and British, and her father was Calabrese Italian,” her mother added. “She’s chosen to live a lie, and I find that very, very sad.”
My great-grandparents came to America from Calabria! Sweet! But I don’t fake my race.
Oskar Pierre Castro helped bring Saraswati to the AFSC. Her resume “touched all the points.” She presented herself to the committee as a “queer, Muslim, multiethnic woman’:
He added that he had been impressed by Saraswati’s credentials and charm and that he thought she would be a good fit for the diversity and inclusion role because “it seemed that there was an element of lived experience and understanding because of the lived experience, not just the academic and extra training that come with being in a position where you are an equity and inclusion practitioner.”
Castro added, “In my mind it was, ‘Great, a person of color, a queer person of color, who happens to be a Muslim, it’s a woman, all these things, and someone who seemed to get it. I definitely feel conned. … I feel deceived.”
AFSC members and supporters encouraged the organization to drop Saraswati, not necessarily because she lied about her race but because she could be a right-wing agent.
“She established her public-facing career in conservative circles in a post-9-11 context rife with anti-Muslim bigotry and the search for token Mulsim voices,” they wrote in the letter.
The member and supporters continued:
Saraswati served as the executive assistant for Irshad Manji, one of the world’s most famous Islamophobes. Saraswati’s early media recognition included her 2007 CNN appearance with conservative Glenn Beck as a “moderate” Muslim opposed to extremism. Saraswati stated on air, “I feel like a lot of higher education at the the moment is very concerned about multiculturalism, appearing to be racist, about all of that…I do think that if we are so afraid to look critically at Islam, because we don’t want to offend people, then nothing is going to happen. And these people who get sent to these universities are just being made to think the way they think.” Saraswati has also appeared on Fox News and Newsmax (the former is considered right-wing and the latter is considered a far-right news channel).
Saraswati even has a mini-documentary on the Honor Diaries YouTube page.
The members and supporters also have a problem with this because the Clarion Project produces these documentaries. The Southern Poverty Law Center has the Clarion Project on its “anti-Muslim hate group” list. Yeah, SPLC is so trustworthy.
One AFSC leadership member told the Intercept: “There’s a fear that she could be an agent, because she started her career right-wing. She was a token Muslim voice in that milieu. She never publicly apologized.”
Or, you know, Saraswati truly changed her political and social views. I did. I went far left to libertarian.
Or, which is most likely, Saraswati is a grifter and drifts to the positions that will give her money, recognition, and fame.
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Comments
If it is OK for a man to pretend to be a woman, then what this person is doing is also OK, correct?
Do women pretend to have different skin when they put on foundation to cover up flaws and blush to change tone? Or is reddening permitted but browning not?
I believe Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet is:
‘God grants unto you one face and you make for yourself another’.
No they don’t. 🤡
What’s a “woman”?
Well, it depends. If she is truly committed to ‘the cause’ then she’ll prove it by cutting her breasts and uterus out. Then I’ll be convinced.
She seems sincere in the video about Islam. I’ll assume she is. Probably, using dark makeup on her face helps combat discrimination against “white as the driven snow” people in the Muslim world. None of this is illegal. There’s no lie here.
Do none of the positive points AFSC hired her for matter if her skin is lighter without makeup?
Is she only a “token Muslim” if she disagrees with most other Muslims? Is that how Islam is, divided into token and mainstream?
She was hired because she checks certain boxes. Not for any skills or abilities, but just checking demographic boxes. Turns out, she doesn’t actually check those boxes, but lied in order to make people think she does.
You or I wouldn’t care, but the people who hired her REALLY care about checking those demographic boxes. It’s kinda all that matters to them.
That’s not how Mr. Castro of AFSC describes the hiring process. Do you think so little of AFSC that you ignore what they say? They’re a bit far left for me, but I grew up with some Quaker congregations around, and they seemed like honest people.
It kinda is what he says…
That’s only because you don’t respect it, and you don’t respect wokeness, so you lump all this together. It is not what he says, it’s just your opinion of it.
That’s only, like, your opinion, man!
Nice.
She was hired because she checked all the boxes and Castro was giddy about that fact.
How long ago was it that you grew up because what Quakers are up to now… and hiring this gal for the identity politics she represents is in NO way indicative of any type of honesty. Like ALL modern progressives they are hypocrites and scam artists investing in destroying mankind for their own profit or power. Yah great group of people you are fawning over all over this comment section.
“Although established by Friends, acting individually, AFSC and the Society of Friends have no legal connections, as stated by its long-time Executive Secretary Clarence Pickett in 1945.”
From a positive Wiki article. So equating your association with Society of Friends groups to the AFSC isn’t an accurate portrayal of AFSC.
After WW II AFSC no longer depended on Friends to supply staffers, instead hiring professionals to staff the organization. Seems like that would do more to remove AFSC from the Friends association and move it further into a Left wing political organization.
Are you blind? She called herself ‘Latina’. Her life is a complete fraud trying to grift on the identity circuit.
I read your comment and wondered how I could have missed “Latina”. So I checked back through the article. And the reason I didn’t remember that it’s not identified where she says it, even though it’s in the title of the article. Mr. Castro of AFSC doesn’t list Latina as a reason they liked her qualifications.
So on hard evidence, how is she a fraud? I could have missed something.
You know, the woke fools she fooled are saying the same thing. She represented herself as a woman of color. Perhaps you should be going after the woke fools she works for who are now disowning her.
Castro added, “In my mind it was, ‘Great, a person of color, a queer person of color, who happens to be a Muslim, it’s a woman, all these things, and someone who seemed to get it. I definitely feel conned. … I feel deceived.”
Person of color is the operative phrase. She isn’t. And she represented herself as such.
PretIndian.
Artichoke suffers from and is in the finals stages of CWS… chronic woke syndrome…. Tragically beyond hope at this stage
2 possibilities
This post is satire or the poster didn’t actually read the article and all of the damning evidence against her.
See my reply to the post above this. I actually read it. Did you?
I guess comprehension doesn’t work for everyone as you are way off on this one.
I’m not sure which I found more risible — a “Muslim Quaker,” or a “queer Muslim.” It’s like embracing the “intersectionality” of oil, water, and tool steel..
I don’t get around much, but I thought Saraswati was the name of a Hindu goddess. Is it also common with Muslims?
Maybe in Pakistan or Indonesia?
A lot of the USA thinks Hindus and Muslims are the same thing.
She is a fraud… period… end of story…
Yep, fraud. She in her completely natural self must count for very little in her mind. Identity politics eventually becomes a train wreck of its own making. Hurry up.
Way to go with ratting her out, Carol. No way she’s coming home to celebrate Easter after that.
I doubt she was visiting home to begin with. Too dangerous. Just like how Markle invited almost no family of her own to her wedding. Too much potential for exposing the lies.
(If you haven’t yet seen South Park’s straight-razor take on Markle, the entire episode is now available free with ads.)
Not to mention Purim or Passover.
Bhahahaha!!!
Coulda been worse, momma. She could’ve been on OnlyFans.
I just want the most qualified person to be hired for any position. If there’s a tie, pull a name out of a hat. I am so exasperated with segregation.
“ Raquel Evita Saraswati”. Gads. That’s creative. My father used to joke he had a classmate at UCLA who had a Chinese mother and Jewish father. Ming Toy Epstein.
Slow down, Grizz. I can’t keep up with the giggles!
Note: if my father used the surname “Epstein” in any story, you knew it was nonsense.
He was a man I despised and still despise. But, I wish he had lived to see the best Epstein of all: Juan Epstein on Welcome Back, Kotter.
Even better, Epstein’s mother.
I thought the “Evita” part might have been a bit too much.
They give it ALL away, don’t they? Merit means nothing. Identity rules all.
Quite frankly you should feel like a fraud, just like her.
He was impressed with how much that white girl hated herself and figured she was easy pickings. Don’t tell me no one knew she was white, of course they did.
The actual problem is that Woke America is entirely too preoccupied with labels – the most important being race and cultural identity.
Divide and conquor: We are being divided and subdivided in every way possible.
True that
When reality is more bizarre than the future “Documentary Now” episode.
Always wondering why non-Jew Caryn Elaine Johnson (aka Whoopie Goldberg) isn’t called out more on her obvious cultural appropriation. That is a Target so big it should be on the NYSE, IMHO.
Go ahead. Call her out. You will be branded a racist, that goes in any of a number of databases, and you will instantly be unemployable.
So then, a retired person should call her out. I would, but nobody listens to me.
I am retired. Caryn Elaine Johnson Is a fraud, a liar. Not to mentioned ugly, loud, obnoxious, stupid….
Being a victim is intoxicating for some in society.
The South Park episode to which I refer above neatly handles this theme as well…
This twit should be tossed into a vat of Calabrian chili peppers as punishment for her mendacity.
That’s not her real mom! Her real mom is Rachel Dolezal!
Nobody checked her oppressed bingo card before awarding her the prize job.
Observations: Young ladies who to extraordinary lengths to find a worthy man and raise a family that isn’t psycho will pretty much inherit the earth.
she’d last about fifteen minutes in the mog
had some relatives that were “friends”–good folks–kind and steady–in a way. like the amish–surprised if they’d tolerate a blatant fraud like this woman
Her eyes are a perfect Aryan light blue. She speaks with a flawless American upper middle class accent, devoid of any hint of ethnicity. Then, straight faced, she adopts the name “Saraswati”, after the Hindu! goddess of wisdom, puts on a shawl and some makeup, and declares herself a Muslim! Can anyone be that stupid? Or oblivious? Or cynical?. Fraud, farce, or both, she exemplifies and exposes the monumental stupidity and shallowness of the modern left.
“Can anyone be that stupid? Or oblivious? Or cynical?.”
Yep.
I can name 2. Fauxcahontas and Dolezal.
You have to admit: Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” set the bar this low. Every low life like Warren wants their free piece of the pie.
Now do Angela Davis finding out she’s a descendant of a white man who came over on the Mayflower.
Yep, she can become a member now. And she’s pissed off LOL.
Here is the kicker:
Calabrese Italian
In the non-Calabrese world of Italians, that was not a good thing.
Speaking of ‘white as the driven snow’, have we forgotten about Rachel Dolezal who was white claiming to be black?
“I don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing.” – her mother
Simple: $$$$
Italian is kinda, technically latinX, right? If you squint and look at it just right?
The American Friends Service Committee is or at least in the past has been something more than a Quaker organization. In the 1960s the Peace Committee of the American Friends Service Committee was a communist-front organization, which espoused the position of the communist parties of the USSR and North Vietnam. Apparently in hibernation for the last few decades, the AFSC has returned to join the chorus advocating DEI.
These cases become more entertaining all the time. First was Rachel Dolezal, trans-racial before it became a “thing”. More recently George Santos, a somewhat different fraud whose ultimate fate is yet to be determined. Now another variation on the theme, a grifter by several measures—trans-religion, trans-sexual (at least LGBT), trans-political. I love her current employer’s suspicion that she may be a right-wing secret agent. What trans condition will the next of these case bring us?
She is fraud – plain and simple – She has taken on a false identity for social accolades and financial gain. Once again proof that there is no such thing as “white privilege”. True privilege resides in the number of identity blocks you can check on the intersectionality bingo card.
True privilege resides in the number of people willing to give you exorbitant amounts of money for pretending not to be a member of the privileged class.
Interesting how all these loons keep turning out to be white. Seems the liberal rhetoric to “hate all whites” is working.
Rachel Dozier, Rev. 2.0.
Doziel. Damn auto-correct.
Like Rachael Dalozell and countless others, this weak poseur has tried to destroy her very existence for more of what our government hands out to people just because they are a minority.