Saira Sameera Rao (born June 12, 1974) is an American political activist, author, publisher, and former Wall Street lawyer and television producer.
She is the co-founder of Race2Dinner, In This Together Media, and Haven, and came to greater prominence in 2018 when she ran for Congress, losing out to incumbent Democrat Diana DeGette in the primary.
For a lawyer to discuss a judge so unflatteringly, even in a fictionalized manner, was considered at least unusual and Rao attributed her desire to write the book partly to address that informal code of silence.
[7] Paula Reed Ward for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found that "even if the stories are too hard to believe, they are so often written with such an easy, casual air, that they prompt nothing but laughs".
[14] In 2013, Rao and her friend from her University of Virginia days, comedian and recruiter Carey Albertine, founded In This Together Media, a publishing company intended to extend the range of children's books about girls, and their diversity in racial and other terms.
[15] The company operates a mixed model for acquiring titles, sometimes receiving submissions and sometimes commissioning authors to write stories based on ideas generated in-house.
[2] A month later, Rao tweeted "Short and long answer: YES", in response to a New York Times op-ed by philosopher George Yancy titled "Should I Give Up On White People?".
[22][25][30] In an op-ed for Teen Vogue she identified her main goal in running as being to promote and achieve "equity — racial, social, and economic", with policy positions including reforms to gun law, a path to citizenship, and reducing the influence of corporate money in politics.
[22][32] During the primaries for the 2020 presidential election she accused candidate Pete Buttigieg of "OPEN racism" and cited his Vanity Fair cover as an example of "the media" as a "white supremacy leader".
[40][41] In 2023, during the Israel-Hamas war, the Creative Artists Agency severed ties with Rao after she referred to Israelis as "bloodthirsty genocidal ghouls" who are so "obsessed with land and power and money that you murder newborns to obtain this STUFF".
She claimed that "the vast majority of white Americans are pro-genocide", as is the CAA itself, for failing to condemn what she alleges is the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
Rao's tweet was condemned as antisemitic by Knesset member Ahmad Tibi, former cable news pundit Mehdi Hasan, and sociologist Philip N. Cohen, but was defended by anti-racist activist Bree Newsome, professor of hospital medicine at the University of California San Francisco Rupa Marya, and German-Palestinian film director Lexi Alexander.
[44][45][46] After her run for Congress, frustrated with conversations about race started with her by individual white female voters, Rao co-founded "Race2Dinner" with Regina Jackson, an educator and realtor whom she got to know on the campaign trail.