The Dangers of a Single Story

When people first look at you for the first time, they think they know who you are without any kind of background knowledge. For most African people, we think of illiterate, uneducated civilians who are very poor. In some cases, that stereotypical line of thinking can be true. But a lot of the time our initial perception on a person is wrong and misconceptions spread to the point where everyone believes them. It is these false misunderstandings that lead to what is believed as a “single story.” As Chimamanda Adichie explained, stereotype can be created in one of these so called “single stories”, which can make people believe that it is the only story. Things such as: family background, ethnicity, nationality, and religion can be manipulated by one person’s experience that makes everyone think that all of the civilians in that area live a certain way.  As Chimamanda stated, she lived a rather snug life. She got to attend school, eat dinner every night, and the opportunity to read a variety of books.  The media is a huge factor in creating this “single story” image because all they talk about is the bad state Africa is in. With all of the talk about Ebola and poverty in the news lately, you would probably assume that the lives of everyone in Africa are terrible. Although, Ebola is only in one small portion in Africa. Chimamanda and her family was just fine and so were a lot of other civilians in her area.

 

The dangers of a “single story” can have more of an impact than you think. Take an election for example.  You probably see all of the annoying commercials and ads giving you reasons why or why not a certain candidate should go be elected into office. The people that give you their frame of reference on the case is only giving you a “single story” so you only hear what they want you to hear. If they list negatives about the candidate they want to get elected, then not as many people would vote for them. The stack the odds towards a certain person and that has often changed the outcome of some of the voting polls.

 

Reflection (quote 2):

"Single stories" can be either good or bad depending on the perspectives they are told from. Take the election example again. Propaganda in forms of card-stacking, name calling, transfer, testimonial, plain folks, and bandwagon techniques are popular strategies known to trick people to think a certain way. It often allows candidates to get praised resulting in a major advantage over their opponents. However, it also works the other way. Candidate's spend months preparing for elections  that often get shot down by their competitors, which commonly leads to someone losing the ballot, which in most cases is probabaly more effective. It's truly amazing what the power of a "single story" can do.