This
weeks TED video was powerful and eye opening.
Chimamanda Adichie was funny and told a very interesting, very pointed
story about the “single story”. I
believe that we all at some point in our life have experienced the “single
story” which is another way of stereotyping.
As children, especially girls, we listen to our parents read us stories
of fairytale endings, the prince always rescues the princess and they go off to
live happily ever after. This single
story though not negative puts that sensory message into a child’s head that as
a girl or woman we must be rescued and that is the only way we will be
happy. We picture our “prince” riding in
on his white horse, slaying the dragon and sweeping us literally off our feet
to the magical castle where nothing ever goes wrong.
Chimamanda
realized this single story when she went to visit Fede and his family in their
village. From the sensory messages her
mother was giving her she pictured a poor family who had nothing. Her single story was that Fede and his family
were poor and had nothing because that was all she was told. She formed her own conclusions as to what
their family life was like based on her mother’s reminders that Fede was poor
and had nothing.
I
have experienced the single story myself.
I grew up living in a mobile home park more commonly known as a trailer
park. I would listen to people tell
jokes and make fun of people who lived in these mobile homes as being ignorant,
toothless rednecks who lived on food stamps and were very undereducated. That their yards would have at least one car
on bricks and maybe even a toilet or two scattered in the yard. I even had a coworker who would describe a
person usually a female as “trailer trash” and then she would look at me and
say “oh no offense”. By her saying this
she was using the information she had been given, her “single story” and made
the assumption that I too lived this way.
By saying “no offense” to me it was her excuse to continue to make these
assumptions and thinking that I too lived like this even though I explained
several times that where I lived wasn’t like that.
It
hit home for me when she talked about immigration and how she bought into the
single story about connecting immigration with Mexicans because well when you
turn the television or open a newspaper that is all you see. I too realized that I was doing the same
thing without knowing the whole story.
We are surrounded by the single story each day through television,
newspapers and even social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Chimamanda
made some really wonderful points when she talked about creating a single story
and how easy it is to do this by only representing only one side and only that
side. She goes on to state that though a
single story is not untrue, it only shows one side and that story is incomplete
because of this only one story is told but it is not complete you are not
getting the whole story. This video
really made me aware that we experience the single story many times over and it
is up to us to break the cycle of the single story because only then will we
become empowered.
