“The Danger of a Single Story”

By: Cristian Balan

The Media always creates single stories by stereotyping cultures and over exaggerating on stories which causes misconception with others. I’ve myself been a victim of a single story. When the media first started talking about Ebola and how it’s in Africa, sweeping the continent of existence and how easy it was to catch the disease. I immediately started thinking all of Africa was infected with this disease and was about to spread like wildfire everywhere; But, it turned out only to be in a few countries of Africa and has killed 4-5,000 people. This proves what the danger of a single story can do to not only an individual, but changing the minds of whole regions to stereotype a certain group of people.

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

 – Chimamanda Adichie

Chimamanda Adichie made an excellent point, because stereotypes aren’t created for no reason. Stereotypes give the generalization of a specific group or culture, but that doesn’t mean that it tells the full “story” of that group or culture. Stereotypes are literally just an observation on an area, group, region, etc. that can’t be changed unless you take your time to understand the entire story of that area, group, region, etc. So stereotypes don’t always mean they are wrong and hurtful, but they do hold some truth to a degree.