I used to laugh it off, or even make jokes to fit in, but now, at the age of 23, I take offense to it. I had a turning point over the last few years when “jokes” about brown families from white bodies began to gnaw at me. I recognized people weren’t laughing with my people, or me, they were laughing at us.

That’s when I realized I was also, in fact, on the margins, part of this homogenized “other” I attempted to distance myself from. From a young age, we are taught to perform whiteness and distance ourselves from brownness to assimilate and fit in, but it’s also as a tool of survival. Part of the uncomfortable laughing when a joke is made about immigrants, or brown people—whether it was one about couponing, the curry smell, hairy women or one that used the racial slur “paki”—was about survival. And, part of it, for me, at least when I was a kid, was buying into the notion that the West was superior.

A lot of what helped me unlearn this integrated and pervasive internalized Western supremacy was reading. As I grew older, reading helped me to unlearn and relearn, to hold myself accountable and to grow. It fostered a love of literature in me—reading as an act of self-care. I found a safe space in narratives and stories, explanations of my displaced feelings in diaspora.

I found myself and depictions of me that were desirable could be found in books, more easily than filmography. I could find authors who wrote dignified narratives of brown girls, and found security between pages and have since been optimistic that literature (well, independent or small press literature written by women of colour—the rest is, at times, jarringly white)—has carved spaces for people of colour to flourish.

This stemmed into a love of bookstores. At least twice a week, I wander aimlessly in one, coffee in hand. I look forward to these visits, but avoid sections with white savior covers. I know how to navigate the aisles of my favorite shops to stay safe. I look at beautiful gold embossed spines, vibrant covers, read multiple book jackets.

Recently, I decided to treat myself to a book or two. I wandered to the diaspora, race, culture and community section of the bookshop. To my disgust I found a magazine back cover turned outward, depicting a South Asian bride being embraced by her father, with bold white lettering that read, “proudly overprotective.”

I immediately felt all of my bookstore happiness evaporate I scanned the advertisement, trying to figure out which “well meaning” white feminist organization had yet again crossed the line between solidarity and orientalism. I’ve become well acquainted with white feminism in my early twenties. A few years ago, I first realized the nuances involved in feminist practice while volunteering at Hamilton City Hall. Another woman remarked, “Wow your people must be proud—it’s rare to see your people volunteer at something like this.”

I don’t have formal education on women and gender studies, but what I did understand at that moment was that a feminist had told me she didn’t authentically believe in someone like me also being feminist. This was someone with an embodiment more privileged than my own letting me know my volunteer work was an anomaly. I’ve had many of these conversations that ring in my ears—“you’re not like your people”—when, indeed, I am like many of my people. So I am now accustomed to this very limited white feminism. The magazine triggered a lot of unsettling feelings. Then, I realized it was a car advertisement.

Stereotypes hurt. Questions like, “When is your arranged marriage” are not cultural dialogue, they’re rude and insulting. I don’t care that someone’s token Indian friend “says it’s fine” to say such things, or that it was asked from curiosity.

People often let me know how whitewashed my father must be for letting me move away from home for college. Others will say patronizing things at supposedly progressive learning institutions, like that woman’s comment—ones that seem to say, “Wow you are an anomaly for your community.” It should go without saying that not all South Asians are the same. Never mind that such comments erase a long history of strong, vocal and independent South Asian women.

We live unique lives “back home” and in the diaspora. I am myself, Nashwa, not some caricature on an episode of Law and Order: SVU.

The notion that as a South Asian woman, my life journey is leaving my father’s house to enter my husband’s home is an erasure of my personhood. Within feminist circles, I often find that women with a white feminist savior complex feel an obligation to ask me about my father in a concerned manner. They interrogate me about my marital status not realizing how patronizing this is. In essence they are fortifying the dichotomy that “brown girls get married” but “white girls have choices.”

From a young age many non-South Asian people would concern troll myself and other South Asian women I know. They inquire deeply into our lives without realizing how offensive their casual fascination is. Many of my college friends have had their visiting fathers mistaken as their husbands, resulting in racially charged commentary.

As a South Asian woman, I have many choices and a lot of support, as do many other women I know or read about. Many women also do not have choices, but that is not isolated to any one culture or religion.

Within South Asian communities there are different sets of values and experiences, however in media we largely see a one-sided representation of all brown people in cookie-cutter storylines. We witness iterations of the “tiger-parent” who rarely displays affection, is strict and demands respect and excellent grades from his or her children. We witness brown children as spelling bee-champions, nerdy, awkward, * insert samosa joke here *, fulfilling a model minority role in school and society. When they deviate from these scripts, bodies like mine are viewed as “rebelling” instead of just living life, a privilege that white characters always have.

We often let media shape our perceptions of the “other” and I hope we can move to more critically thinking about how media can sensationalize and skew a few narratives to represent a whole people. I also hope we can move towards recognizing nuances in communities and that not everyone is the same. Sweeping stereotypes and generalizations are violent.

Four NYU students recently decided they’d had enough of heavily centralized, corporate-minded social networking sites. They took on the task of developing a social network to prove that online sharing and privacy should go hand in hand. What they came up with was Diaspora.

Here’s what the New York Times had to say about the team and its project:

(They) intend to distribute the software free, and to make the code openly available so that other programmers can build on it. As they describe it, the Diaspora software will let users set up their own personal servers, called seeds, create their own hubs and fully control the information they share.

Though the creators of Diaspora have not come right out and slammed Facebook, they have credited a talk by Eben Moglen, a professor of law at Columbia University, as the inspiration behind the project. Mogden is no fan of Facebook or its creator, Mark Zuckerberg. Here’s a gem from Mogden’s talk in New York City last February:

Mr. Zuckerberg has…done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age…[H]e harnessed Friday night, that is, ‘Everybody needs to get laid,’ and turned into a structure for degenerating the integrity of human personality and he has to remarkable extent succeeded with a very poor deal, namely ‘I will give you free web-hosting and some PHP doodads and you get spying for free all the time’.

Will Diaspora dismantle what Mogden calls “a Panopticon built out of web parts”? We won’t know that for sure until the software launches next September, but a few critics aren’t totally convinced.

Regardless of the speculation around its potential to effect mainstream change, Diaspora has generated a sturdy support base in a short time. Thanks to media coverage and buzz from the blogosphere, Diaspora fundraised more than ten times its stated goal in two days. At this point, Diaspora’s Kickstarter account shows that more than 2500 backers have collectively put up over $100,000 to get the grassroots project underway. While we wait for Facebook to be crushed by a user uprising, however, uh, maybe you’d like to click the “Like” button at the top of this post?

Brenda, one of the orphaned children at the CYCA Center for Orphaned Children. Photo credit: TMS Ruge (tmsruge.com).

International development and foreign aid is a complicated and contentious field. A thousand different components—such as water, sanitation, food security, child care, education, infrastructure—need to be addressed simultaneously. The targeted community must be the leader of all changes. Financing must come from a sustainable source, such as partial subsidization by the community itself, to ensure a sense of “ownership.” Hand-outs lead to laziness and a lack of responsibility.

The traditional model of development, the one I first became familiar with in 2007, is no longer applicable. There is no room for “imposed” development. While a one-week orientation might be enough to put a thin mask over “imposition,” if the community is not at the root of the development process then the project will inevitably fail as donors leave.

While the “imposition” model is less and less common, it is still hard to find “home-grown” development projects. Many are crowded out by mainstream development networks with larger budgets. Others have not harnessed the Internet to communicate with the media and the public. In many regions in Eastern Africa, civil society is limited and local non-governmental organizations uncommon.

Because of these circumstances, when I come across a project like the CYCA Center for Orphaned Children, I find its accomplishments remarkable. Founded by Armstrong Ongera, a philosophy graduate from the University of Nairobi and Founder/President of the Armstrong International Development Network (AIDN), the orphanage is a sustainable development model based on local funding. It is developed by Kenyans, for Kenyans.

While the local volunteering ethos is only just starting to make an impact in Eastern Africa, Ongera has harnessed the talents of friends and family, as well as the Diaspora, and ensured their contribution to a variety of projects—from the orphanage to banana growing in Kisii, South-Western Kenya. Members, both in Kenya and in the Diaspora, contribute $20 a month.

Ongera moved to Nairobi, the country’s capital, as he started high school. He settled in one of the city’s many slums, living with his brother and later by himself. He describes slum life as a “culture” unto itself, offering a variety of experiences and a tight, impermeable community. While he mentions the many problems that come with extreme poverty—rape and domestic abuse, among others—he speaks fondly of the mentality slum-life engendered: a sense of community and togetherness.

This mentality was eventually translated into the orphanage located in Ongata Rongai, a community on the borders of Nairobi. Founded in 2007, the center takes care of 22 children between the ages of 5 and 14.

The orphanage is not about getting children off the street to only see them return as adults. Ongera aims to ensure that they leave as independent and successful young adults with the resources to achieve the dreams they have now.

Willa, a five-year-old Maasai girl, wants to be an actress; another wants to be a journalist; yet another a pilot. “I want to make sure they are exposed to these dreams,” explains Ongera, who incorporates a type of career planning into their five-day school week. “I want to make sure they know what it takes to be what they want.”

The orphanage’s main room is covered in paintings and pictures, sign that the children are given the opportunity to explore and use their imagination. We sit in circles singing songs and they proudly show me their art creations. While sleeping quarters are tight, there is a large playground outside. For dinner, they sit at a long table and eat healthy portions of ugali (protein filled maize) and sukuma (green vegetables). Many still wear face paint from the afternoon’s field trip.

Most children are sourced from a local slum where they were left with extended family or the community, neither which could not care for them adequately. Some lost their parents to HIV/AIDS, others to the 2008 post-election violence. Some have family who come to visit on Sunday, but Ongera says he rarely see anyone.

Inspired by his own upbringing and his unique position to help these children, Ongera has teamed up with other Kenyans and stepped in to help. While they may not have a traditional family, these children have found a new home in the orphanage, one which offers the stability of field trips, regular schooling, healthy food, close friends and adopted parents.

AIDN is looking for Kenyan Diaspora members to help contribute to the program, primarily in terms of mentorship. Please contact AIDN via Project Diaspora.