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 In the photos, which the mother asked not be published, Saraswati’s complexion is significantly lighter than the bronzed look in more recent photographs.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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