The Dangers of a Single Story

 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Danger of a Single Story explores the negative influence that a "single story" can have whilst also identifying its roots. As a child, Adichie wrote stories about white people and western society because she didn't realize that books could depict anything else until she learned about other African writers. And having grown up in a middle-class household she had help around the house, she was always told he was poor and pitied him until she visited his home. But Adichie herself was not immune from stereotyping. When she moved to the United States her roommate already pitied her before even meeting her and she was surprised that she could speak English or that she could work the stove.  But the other herself has also been influenced by the "single story".  Due to the large media coverage of Mexicans being immigrants "she had bought the single story" until she actually took a trip to Mexico and realized they were not harmful as the American media had perceived them to be.  And she says during her speech "to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become”. I think this reiterates the importance of spreading diverse stories and not leaving the scope on one thing like when she was young.

This Ted Talk directly correlates with many different aspects of our society. The first thing is that Social Media has become the hub for single stories. A great example of this is when Chimamanda Adichie says that Africa is “a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner.” This is a single story that social media has created about Africa that people tend to believe even though it is very inaccurate. Another thing that connects our society with this Ted Talk is that in our society we tend to judge before knowing the whole story or truth. For example, if you see someone pass by the mosque and there are people praying and he does not people automatically assume that he is not a good Muslim without hearing his side of the story or not thinking that he might be Christian or that he prayed at home. But single stories exist everywhere not just here and I've experienced it countless times. Whenever I go to travel I am stopped every time by security even when I was a child due to the single story of Arabs and Muslims being terrorists.

To conclude "When we reject the single story. when we realize that there is never a single story of any place, we regain a kind of paradise" this is a quote that I think many of us need to hear.