What makes me different than my family, my friends, my mentors? The answer is what stories I have to to distribute about my life versus what theirs are.
Humanity learns of itself through stories. Stories in textbooks, novels, bibliographies, etc. All these stories allow a separation of on person to the next. My story of my life is different from another persons. It is for that reason we are so different, despite going to the same schools, learning similar things, living in the same country. Our country however is guilty of telling a single story of groups of people, similar in some ways to how Chimamanda Adichie claims western literature puts a label on all of Africa. Humanity has a long past of labeling, and misidentifying individuals and groups of people. Segregating people into categories is nothing new to humans today, or decades before us. For the most part, we detest the idea of such a classification system. However, not liking something and not doing something are two separate beasts. My parents don’t like texting, yet we see them texting all the time. Similarly, we watch new media classify “Liberals” and “Conservatives” as if its a decision between one faction or another, one identity or another. Realistically however, it is completely unlikely any single, self thinking person believes wholesomely in all of one factions ideals.
Now, I am not writing to create political arguments, however I want to emphasis that we think and say things all the time that clearly divide each other in categories we all probably do not truly belong to. We often forget that people of any political party are human, they make mistakes and decisions. They are human after all. However, Adichie calls upon us all to not give into the single story, whether it be by Nigeria or by Mexico. The lesson learned should carry on into other regions of perspective as well. Whether that perspective be on how we obtain news is dependent on how far you are willing to observe to moral of Adichie’s story.
The news, globally, displays an important frame on society. As I read through the transcript of Adichie’s speech, I found a quote that speaks heavily on the worries of censored society. As Adichie says “[i]t is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power”. This statement is completely true throughout modern human interaction with each other. Power, in all forms has the potential to corrupt. Censored media, like Russian media for example, gives one story of an incident, based completely off of what the ruling government decides. This not only gives one perspective to a potentially multi-sided story, however it allows for the government to decide the story of the people. I believe Adichie references the political implications of a single story several times throughout the speech because we are able to fight against a single story. We have the ability to go out and find the other side to the story. She wants her listeners, her readers to find the truth of each story, instead of allowing someone else to decide the story for you, or for another people. As Adichie explains in her speech, many people from her home country of Nigeria could not read because they could not afford to buy the books to read. This is an exceptionally scary issue because a people that are unable to read, are only able to listen and sometimes, listening to one perspective or what one person says is just as or even worse than knowing a single story. Ultimately, humanity as a whole must climb away from the ideas of a single story, or a single belief, in order to see the world for what it is. Yes, it is true, as Adichie admits, crime throughout the world is bad, however, crimes of the few do not make up the mind of an entire society, unless you only listen to a single story.
Questions:
After reading the texts, do you feel as though you have fallen for the single story trap?
Is it possible to end the “Single Story” problem in our lifetime, or is similar to being perfect, a constant attempt but never getting to perfection?
Brian,
So many great points in this blog post. I found is especially powerful how you connected Adichie’s idea of a single story with what is going on in the world right now with media and “single stories” that are often depicted on television or in other news outlets. In Adichie’s talk, she explains how a single story-type of understanding is created by situations where people are just not aware or educated enough to know the difference, and it is not necessarily on purpose. But in the media I see single stories purposely being told, to a one sided audience, which is a part of how our world has become so polarized politically.
I wonder if it is part of our nature to see things from only our perspective and what we can do to make it habit to put on other’s perspectives and educate ourselves more about the stories we hear.
I think it is our job to educate ourselves and look at all aspects of a story tat we may hear so that we do not fall victim to the single story-phenomenon.
Hi Chelsie,
I agree with the view that the media intentionally sways the story for their benefit. This is somewhat of a recent event happening in news. At one point, America had laws against this type of bias or corrupt reporting. However, in recent decades this law was repealed. To me, it makes me wonder why government officials would want bias behavior in the media, however perhaps they see it as a benefit to them. In any matter, Educating ourselves in the “Single-Story Problem” and expanding our knowledge of more stories, and the lead up to those stories may help build a foundation toward a more informed society in all matters.