A diversity activist who claimed to be Latina, Arab, and South Asian was outed as white by her mother.
Raquel Evita Saraswati, 39, is the chief equity and cultural officer for a liberal organization that fights for global peace and social justice.
Her own mother outed her, saying she is “white as the driven snow.”
“I call her Rachel,” mom Carol Perone said in an interview with The Intercept. “I don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing. I’m as white as the driven snow and so is she. I’m German and British, and her father was Calabrese Italian. She’s chosen to live a lie, and I find that very, very sad.”
Saraswati was previously outed as white on social media over the years, but none of the rumors gained traction until now.
According to Perone, her daughter converted to Islam in high school and began misrepresenting herself as being of a different ethnic identity.
Saraswati is the latest transracial person to misappropriate other races and ethnicities.
Other famous transracials in the news include Shaun King and Rachel Dolezal — white people who passed as Black for financial gain.
But transracialism is not exclusive to white people.
Notable Black actors Lena Horne and Frank Silvera passed as white to secure roles in films and television.
Horne, who was initially cast in Black roles, began passing as white in the 1940s. Jamaican-born Frank Silvera was cast as white, Latino, or Indian in many films and TV series in the 1950s and ’60s.
Most famously, Silvera played a white man in the “Fancy Figures” episode of “Perry Mason”, which originally aired on December 13, 1958. He is pictured in a scene from “Perry Mason” alongside a white actor who played his son.
Silvera later regretted passing as white and became an activist for Black civil rights.
Hollywood studios routinely cast Silvera and other Black actors as white to save money, since white actors demanded higher pay.
