The Threatening Migrant vs. the Friendly Digital Avatar: How the Ethnic Other Has Two Faces in the Caucasian World

Early December 2025, Malta rescued 61 illegal immigrants from a capsized boat in the Mediterranean, providing them with emergency medical support after taking them ashore. With the majority of the rescued coming from Bangladesh and various African countries, the visuals of their being treated (for free) by Maltese medics and ambulances only give local netizens, already angry about rampant foreign arrivals in the country, additional ammunition to call for a more stringent anti-immigrant stance by the government. 

As expected, the online comments were not kind. The more humanitarian ones called for their care, after which they should be deported to wherever they came from. Some called for people worldwide to follow visa procedures, ignoring the fact that most of the illegals would neither have the knowledge nor the wherewithal to get passports, collect legal documents, and go through bureaucratic procedures. The most brutal comments simply asked that the ships and the occupants be left be, so that none back home would be encouraged by stories of success.

Stringing together these stories is a caricature. New reports and photos show that unfortunate dark-skinned persons are helped by Caucasian professionals, reinforcing the good old white savior complex so mainstream in the colonial era but so persistent in the current climate of economic wealth being so concentrated in the hands of the West. The visual narrative of white = successful, rich, and kind, and dark = poor, suffering, but still menacing, serves as anti-diversity fodder across a good chunk of the Western far-right defending Judeo-Christian values as their self-appointed traditional guardians.

In a political climate that increasingly sees political correctness as taboo, it is difficult to find companies voluntarily tackling this paradigm. After all, if the most desirable consumers are white, why come up with anything that remotely risks drawing their ire? When the likes of Trump and the MAGA movement, not to mention their European equivalents in the National Rally, Reform UK, and AfD, see white as beautiful, the era of deliberate minority representation in the public sphere among their white-dominant nations may have been a historical aberration, rather than some globalizing inevitability. 

But one corporate actor seems to buck the trend and be successful at it. Duolingo, the world's leading language learning app, has a cohort of characters that help users navigate conversations. They are deliberately diverse, ranging from a happy Sikh uncle to what can only be called an overweight grandma to a purple-haired goth/emo girl. These characters do not just speak languages that their cultures are assumed to speak, but appear equally across all available languages. In their jokes, on-screen shenanigans, and dialogues, their unique personalities shine through.

A particularly notable character is Zari, a bubbly Muslim girl wearing a (usually pink) headscarf that entirely covers her hair. In a world that assumes conservative attire to be associated with conservative norms of submissiveness, quietness, and passiveness, Zari is anything but. She is constantly seeking out new adventures, urging her friends to try new experiences, and even talking about her secret love for (clearly non-Muslim) boys. Her love for music and dance encapsulates the app developers' intentionality in designing her to break stereotypes. 

With more and more illegal immigrants washing ashore across the southern fringes of Europe, the world needs more Zaris. Yes, border security is a real issue, and the majority of those affected are not white. But ultimately, they represent a tiny fraction of the population in the countries and cultures where they come from. More of them are like Zari, happy to grow up amongst friends, curiously looking for fun, and not burdened by the supposed pressures of their religious beliefs. The fact that she feels so different only shows the prevalence of the dehumanizing ways international media cover certain populations.

Duolingo's success proves that its white consumer base is not turned off by the representation of the cultural other as not fundamentally different in personalities, desires, and even lifestyles. Sure, language learners may be an atypical bunch, disproportionately interested in interacting with foreign cultures and peoples. But I'd reckon that they are not the only social or consumer group that'd be okay with having a few more non-white friends, even virtual, in their otherwise ethnically monolithic lives. Only if they can embrace a few more people coming in boats, as they would Zari.