The Danger of a Single Story

The concepts of stories and storytelling go way back. In Chimamanda Adichies's Ted Talk, she discusses how influential a single story can be. People are impressionable and vulnerable in the face of a story, particularly as children. So, how is a single story generated? Simple. You repeatedly show people or something as one thing, and one thing ONLY, and that's what they become. As a result, that single story becomes almost permanent in the minds of people, and becomes the first thing that comes to mind when a person is trying to correlate a thought to that story.

 

Similar to Chimamanda's experience with Fede, a boy her mother had hired, who came from a poor family. Once Chimamanda saw Fede and his families' unfortunate lifestyle, it was difficult for her to see Fede's family as anything else other than poor, despite their unexpected talents. The stereotype Fede and his family were labeled with was created by the single story that Fede was poor. The issue with stereotypes is not that "they are untrue, but that they are incomplete". Stereotypes steer that one story to becoming the only story.

 

This Ted Talk instantly brought a similar encounter I had experienced to mind. Back when I lived in Canada, the leading questions people would ask me once they knew I was from Egypt were: Do you live inside of the Pyramids? Do you ride camels to school? Most questions circulated that kind of nature. Personally, I was shocked at the questions I received. How are these people that ignorant and uneducated? It especially took me by surprise because Canada is a well educated country, with broad-minded people. I did not understand how limited and stereotypical their rationale was. In response to these questions, I educated these foreigners about Egypt and how modernized it actually is.

Thus, only viewing one side of a story quickly drives people to jump to conclusions and to make uninformed judgements. What if we actually listened to multiple stories instead of just one story? It would not only broaden our understanding, but it would allow us to think in more than just one perspective.