Raquel Evita Saraswati and the new ‘race fakers’

Raquel Evita Saraswati (Credit: Facebook)

Embellishing job applications is a well-honed skill. At the stroke of a pen, two months as an intern becomes four months in a junior position. Being in charge of paper clips is demonstrating leadership. The assistant to the regional manager becomes the assistant regional manager. But no matter how commonplace this exaggeration is, few of us go full Don Draper and make up things about who we actually are.

Meet Raquel Evita Saraswati. Saraswati is chief equity, inclusion and culture officer at the Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organisation that fights globally for peace and social justice. Her qualifications for the role are impressive. Not only does Saraswati have the academic credentials and training required, she has that all important extra: lived experience. Saraswati is of Latino, South Asian and Arab descent. The human resources consultant involved in her recruitment, Oskar Pierre Castro, describes her as a ‘queer, Muslim, multiethnic woman’. What’s more, Saraswati is ‘an activist’, a public voice for ‘moderate’ muslims, used to fronting campaigns and challenging media appearances.

Only it turns out, this is not just embellishment but outright untruths. Not the qualifications or employment history – the mundane stuff people usually exaggerate. No, Saraswati was less than truthful on the ‘lived experience’ section of her application. And she has now been publicly outed by her own mother, Carol Perone. ‘She’s as white as driven snow,’ Perone told the Intercept, an American online publication.