A leader in the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has been accused of being white instead of being a “person of color,” prompting anger within the Left-wing organization, according to a new report. 

Raquel Evita Saraswati, a Muslim activist who was born Rachel Elizabeth Seidel, is facing backlash from inside the AFSC after members and others raised concerns that Saraswati may not have been honest about her ethnic background, according to a new report from The Intercept. 

According to the report, members of the AFSC are now upset that Sarawswati, the organization’s chief of diversity, equity, and inclusion, is reportedly white. An anonymous letter from members of the organization and others accused Saraswati of “cultural vulturism” and asked that she resign. 

The Intercept spoke with family members of Saraswati who said that she was misrepresenting her identity. “I call her Rachel,” Carol Perone, Saraswati’s mother, said. “I don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing.”

Perone told the outlet that her daughter is not Latina, South Asian, or Arab as previously portrayed, but instead has a family background originating in Britain, Germany, and Italy. “I’m as white as the driven snow and so is she,” Perone said. “She’s chosen to live a lie, and I find that very, very sad.”

Oskar Castro, a human resource professional with a focus on DEI who helped to bring Saraswati to the AFSC, told The Intercept that he felt “deceived” because he believed that she wasn’t white, and checked a variety of diversity boxes. 

“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,” he said. 

Saraswati also faced criticism for past appearances on outlets like Fox News. 

“People are concerned,” a member of AFSC’s leadership 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.”

Layne Mullett, a spokesperson for the AFSC, said that it does not require its team members to “prove” their ethnic identity.

“We are in receipt of the documentation alleging that our Chief Equity, Inclusion, and Culture Officer, Raquel Saraswati, has been misrepresenting her identity. AFSC has given Raquel the opportunity to address the allegations against her, and Raquel stands by her identity. Raquel also assures us that she remains loyal to AFSC’s mission, which we firmly believe,” Mullet said. 

Saraswati would not be the first person to mislead the public about an ethnic identity for apparent career advancement. Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP Spokane chapter president, made headlines in 2015 when she was revealed to be a white woman pretending to be black.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) said during a discussion this week that the political Left uses bigotry of low expectations to create victim groups.

The two Texas Republicans made the remarks during an episode of “Verdict,” a podcast co-hosted by Cruz and Ben Ferguson.

“You’re a Cuban American, and I am a black man,” Hunt said. “And what’s really funny about this is why the Left would absolutely pontificate about how we cannot exist. Here we are sitting here in unison with same, the same conservative values and so different backgrounds from different parts of the Earth.”

“My great-great-grandfather was a slave,” he said. “And here we are having this conversation about conservative values and nobody cares about what we look like. This is the argument that the Left cannot deal with because it does not fit their narrative.”

Cruz said that it was important for people to understand the histories of both political parties because it’s what “the media and the Democrats use to scare minority voters.”

“The Democrat policy agenda is absolutely horrific,” Cruz said. “If you sat down and said, let’s design a policy agenda to devastate the African American community and the Hispanic community, you could not come up with anything more effective than the Democrat agenda.”

Cruz highlighted how Democrats’ policies create crime before noting how their policies have hurt black families.

“You look at the Left-wing assault on the family,” Cruz said. “Go back to the black family in the 1950s in the 1960s where you had strong two-parent households … Look, the Great Society, the Left-wing policies that said, ‘We’re gonna give you welfare payments, we’re going to disincentivize marriage and divide the home.’”

“And they trapped generations of low-income Hispanics and African Americans in dependency,” Cruz added. “And the Democrat agenda has trapped generations in poverty and dependency where you have 1, 2, 3, 4 generations on welfare and unable to get off of it, unable to get the dignity of a job, and then throw on top of that failed schools.”

Hunt said that the Democrat was designed to “create victims.”

“So imagine if my parents raised me, then they told me, ‘You know what? This world is so much against you in America is so bad that you can’t even get an ID. Rely on me and I will give you a check,’” he said. “Imagine if my parents told me that every single day. I certainly wouldn’t be a United States Congressman. And that’s what I mean by the soft bigotry of low expectations. And that’s how they keep people voting for them by promising the very bare minimum.”

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