The Danger of A Single Story: A TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice – and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
Before I’d even watched this TED talk, I automatically thought ‘Oh, this is going to be boring and I won’t be able to understand it, just like the other million links my Dad has sent me.’ Before I had even watched it, I’d already judged what I thought it was going to be like.
The concept of a single story is dangerous and yet commonly used in today’s society. From topics such as politics to even just making a new friend, we judge everyone and everything after just hearing one version of the full story.
In her TED talk, Adichie shares a few personal stories about how the recurring single story has played into her life, in both a positive and negative way. She talks about her misconceptions of other people labelled as “poor,” who are just as hardworking as her own family, and also shares the tale of how her roommate in the US took the same, single story and applied it to her as well.
All of these stories make me who I am. But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me. 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.
Adichie perfectly describes how dangerous a single story can be; we take one account, one story, one perspective, and we turn it into the only account, the only story, the only perspective about a person, place or thing. As humans, we are quick to judge and often associate a single story with a group or culture, even though it may only be one perspective of the whole truth.
I’ve always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasises how we are different rather than how we are similar.
We’ve all fallen into the trap of the single story before, whether it be about people, a community, a culture, or even just trying a type of food – the first moment or story we have with someone or something is the only one we’ll (most likely) associate it with in the future.
Stories are powerful. There’s no doubt about it. Stories have the power to hurt people, but they also have the power to ignite change and transform others. There’s one quote that really stood out to me in her talk and it was this:
Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanise. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
In the end, the stories we tell have meaning. They describe the journey of people and places, inspire those who hear and/or read them, and most of all, stories have the power to unite people together, forming strong bonds and relationships. Just like there can be many versions of us that we choose to share with people, there are many stories that we can choose to share with others. Every version shows a different perspective, and those perspectives combine to tell the whole truth, and not just the partial one.