It turns out that the Arab-Latina feminist who served as the senior equity, inclusion and culture leader for the American Friends Services Committee is actually a white girl.
Raquel Evita Saraswati, the woman who claimed to be an Arab-Latina Muslim for more than 10 years is actually a white girl named Rachel, according to her own mother.
“I call her Rachel,” the activist’s mother, Carol Perrone, told The Intercept. “I don’t know why he’s doing what he’s doing.”
“I’m German and British, and his father was Calabrese Italian,” his mother said. “He chose to live a lie, and I find that very, very sad.”
“I’m driven snow and she’s so white,” the mother said, adding that her daughter’s real color is much lighter than it appears in her recent photos.
The Intercept reported:
Members of the American Friends Service Committee, a prominent Quaker organization known in the United States and abroad for its support of progressive values and social justice, have raised concerns about a woman in a leadership position within the organization who they say has misrepresented her ethnic background. Years and those who fear may act on behalf of groups seeking to undermine their organization.
Raquel Evita Saraswati, a Muslim activist who for years has encouraged people to believe she is a woman of color, including Latina as well as South Asian and Arab descent, is AFSC’s chief equity, inclusion and culture officer, a senior position. This gave him access to the files of dozens of the organization’s staff and volunteers. But Saraswati, who was born Rachel Elizabeth Seidel, is not a person of color, according to her mother, Carol Perrone.