That’s no Raquel, that’s a Rachel
Another fantasy idenniny unmasked:
Members of the American Friends Service Committee, a prominent Quaker organization known for its progressive values and social justice advocacy in the U.S. and abroad, have raised an alarm about a woman holding a leadership position within the organization who they say has misrepresented her ethnic background for years and who they fear may be working on behalf of groups seeking to undermine their organization.
Raquel Evita Saraswati, a Muslim activist who for years has encouraged people to believe that she is a woman of color, including Latina as well as of South Asian and Arab descent, is the AFSC’s chief equity, inclusion, and culture officer, a senior position that gives her 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 Perone.
It’s a tad greedy, pretending to be so many DiVerse idenninies that you’re not. Latina and South Asian and Arab – come on.
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.
But she’s brown in her soul. Her lived experience is brown. She started speaking a mix of Spanish, Arabic, and Urdu when she was just a tiny child.
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.
Well that’s high school for ya.
Oskar Pierre Castro, a human resources professional who participated in the search committee to fill Sarawati’s position, told The Intercept that she had presented herself as a “queer, Muslim, multiethnic woman.”
In other words she presented herself as Interesting.
“It really touched all the points,” said Castro, who works for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a Quaker group that frequently partners with the AFSC, and who was involved in the search along with AFSC staff members. 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.”
And the best part is you get to tick a whole bunch of boxes with just this one person.
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.”
Why was he excited about ticking the Muslim box? Would he be excited about ticking the fundamentalist Protestant box, or the strict Catholic box? Conservative religions are conservative, whether they’re “diverse” or not. “Saraswati” wears hijab while women in Iran and Afghanistan are beaten up, imprisoned, tortured, killed for refusing to wear it. Why are organizations that consider themselves progressive excited to sign up a woman wearing hijab (along with heavy makeup, sculpted eyebrows, and earrings)?
The revelation that Saraswati appears to have created a false impression about her ethnic background has roiled the AFSC.
Where “created a false impression”=”lied.”
H/t Sackbut
In the mere presence of the phrase “lived experience” I could rip an entire room apart.
I was just wondering where you would detail your “lived experience” on your CV (aside from the obvious)? In Rachel’s case possibly under Hobbies? It must have been the personal interview that convinced them to hire her.
Why is it that women who lie about their ethnicity to get ahead are rightly vilified, but men who lie about their sex not only get to keep their jobs but are praised for being stunning and brave, and it is anyone who points out the lie who gets vilified?
One could almost think that it has something to do with patriarchy.
Mind you, she isn’t necessarily lying about being a Muslim. They take converts of any colour, and just like holy gender, it’s a simple case of saying the Magic Words.
@Piglet, in the full article, the mother says that Rachel converted to Islam in high school.
True, but it’s also true that there’s a kind of ethnic aspect to being a Muslim just as there is to being a Jew…and probably a Christian and so on down the list.
D’oh, that part was quoted here too. I swore I double checked and it wasn’t. Sorry.
“Lived experience” is not necessarily a fantasy. I should qualify as white per family background, but I really do have a lived experience of a PoC. I have been asked my ethnic background all the times from youth, being barely believed most of the times, when not met with complete incredulity more often then not. People would not accept the answer. I eventually refused to answer questions about ethnicity, on the ground it was a bit offensive (but truly it was rather that most people refused to believe me anyway). The issue is going much further than the question as to who you are. Those asking are simply the best behaving people, actually. Those not asking are already discriminating, they do not need their beliefs validated by any answer. You’re really locked always wondering about the true reasons why you are refused a position, why you are deemed less competent or why your credentials seemed matching but no they don’t. Of course it’s going further in other directions too, when you’re not fitting the expected stereotype whatever that might be, “Oh you’re calm”, “I didn’t expect you to work that hard”, “That’s a very good job!” (when it’s a regular job just done, nothing outstanding here). Positive discrimination is damaging like hell as well, especially when obviously misapplied.
It’s amazing that weird feeling that something is at play but you don’t know for sure, you can never be so sure. But the pattern is here, really. There are hints. Because other people know what is at play, they feel wrong, or try to justify in a way that makes it all the more obvious.
I’m a non-white white, with a lived experience of non-white, and it is a bit upsetting me that lived experience might be trashed out that easily. This is not an easy issue. Racism is real. And it has consequences beyond the usual victims.
I guess sexism is real and has consequences beyond the usual victims too. I’ve never been manly mannish. This is also part of why I understand feminism in ways that are not the lived experience of a woman, but the lived experience of a gender non-conforming male. I did not need lengthy explanations about consequences for women, just because I already knew consequences for myself too.
Lived experience depends on social interactions a lot. Contexts make it worse. Or easier. Still here.
Laurent, I also don’t think lived experience is completely invalid. I have lived experience as a poor person, white trash, living in a rich town. It’s brutal. And my employers actually considered my background when hiring me for this position in a rural, half-backward small city community college. My lived experience was not the reason they hired me, though. It was ultimately my credentials. In the end, that lived experience didn’t count one wit in their decision, it was my ability to teach a wide variety of classes, added with my real world experience.
Lived experience has helped me doing my job, because I understand more than the other faculty (none of them came from that sort of background; they are constantly astounded that students can work and go to college at the same time). But what makes me able to do my job is not the boxes I tick on “lived experience”, it’s the credentials that prepared me for the job through knowledge and experience.
Too many places seem to be substituting “lived experience” for other things, making it the key factor, and too many end up getting burned, like in this case.
And in your case, you had lived experience of that. It appears Rachel/Raquel did not.
Sir Humphrey Appleby will be in touch: The ideal quango appointee is a Black Welsh disabled woman trades unionist. We’re all looking for one of them. You don’t happen to know any one, do you?
It’s the claim of “lived experience” as someone you’re not, followed by its acceptance that is the problem. Some “burn victims” are accidental; some should know better. Men claiming their “lived experience” in womanface makes them women is one example. See Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, which hired as its director Mridul Wadhwa, a man without even the fig leaf of a GRC.
Laurent @ 8 – No, I agree with you, lived experience is not always just trendy jargon (or a fantasy). It absolutely can be relevant.
That still leaves open one important question. If she also turned out to be an Islamist bomb-chucker, and thus qualified to score 72 virgins on entering Paradise, would she get to pick and choose her own 72? And of what birth sex, in their case? Or would Allah (pbuh) or maybe Mohammad (pbuh again) do the choosing for her?
It’s an important question, and needs to be answered.
Ophelia @ 8
I wonder about that. Judaism, at least in its modern version, seems significantly different. They don’t seek converts, and there is a common argument about whether being Jewish is a religion or an ethnicity. (For example, someone who descended from Jews on a matrilineal line is considered a Jew in some circles, even if the family has been Christian for generations.) I don’t think there is such an assumption in Islam, and I know that Islam does proselytize and seek converts.
But certainly, there are common assumptions that Muslims are of particular ethnicities and that people of those ethnicities are Muslim.
That’s why I worded it in such an evasive way…because it is complicated, and not the same between the two. There’s a kind of ethnic aspect but it’s contested within the two religions and between them and among individuals and so on. “Ethnic” itself can mean different things to different people.
There’s the whole complication of being secular/atheist but from a Muslim or Jewish family and how that remains relevant despite non-belief.
But is there? Most people I know equate Muslims with Arabic people, but Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
There is, yes. Much of the UK news media for instance tend to assume people whose parents or grandparents emigrated from Pakistan are Muslim, and that they’re all quite conservatively Muslim.
and…Pakistanis are, of course, not “Arab”. There are a lot of Black Africans who are Muslim, too. So, the Arabs may be the most visible, but it seems questionable to assign ethnic categories to the religion. Especially as there are some Arabs who are Christian (Marianites, Iraqis, etc.)
So, “Raquel Saraswati” Rachel Dolezaled or George Santosed her way in to the American Friends Service Committee. To “Raquel”: You betrayed and destroyed the trust of the organization that has dedicated itself to promoting and actively working to protect human rights. Perhaps the American Friends Service Committee will learn this lesson on the need to vet future members for positions within it.
So, “Raquel Saraswati” Rachel Dolezaled or George Santosed her way to having a position within the American Friends Service Committee. Does she realize that she destroyed the trust of this organization by not only claiming to be Latina, Middle Eastern, and South Asian, but also by working for another organization that promotes Islamophobia? What kind of name for an organization is American Islamic Forum for Democracy?
Here’s a link to an article by The Intercept about her:
https://theintercept.com/2023/02/16/american-friends-service-committee-raquel-saraswati/
Maybe it should just be called the Dolezal-Santos Maneuver, Dolezal-Santos for short.
Ophelia, that has my vote. it’s descriptive, pithy, and fits in with modern jargon.
If she actually cited those backgrounds during the interview then she lied and should be fired for that…
If 100 ‘genders’ then why not create a few more races?? I mean, did the Turks. Greeks and Romans think white? Boris half Turk… new king half Greek … ‘white’ by association