Ted Talk Danger Of A Single Story Summary

They are matters which have literally torn our country apart and utterly divided the American people. Adichie urgently seeks an equal yet peaceful world, powerfully declaring, “The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar” (Adichie). This is imperative in regards to creating a new standard; furthermore, to persuade others to look at the world with an open mind. Adichie further urges, “Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a person, but stories can also repair that broken dignity” (Adichie). The significance of Adichie’s speech thus reaches a pivotal peak. Adichie is referring to the sources in which we receive our one sided story. Sources such as television, radio stations, newspapers, social media, all of which are considered normal entertainment, but are in fact broadcasting stories that are not told from all involved participants thus leaving a fixated conviction. Therefore, it is difficult to disregard the single story when it is constantly in our presence. Through words, Adichie hopes to alter the strong influence of said

The danger of a single story is that they let the powerful downgrade the weaker because they create stereotypes, they can hurt the people, and no one gets represented from the culture.

In July 2009, at a TED conference, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian author, gave a stunning speech about “the Danger of a Single Story”. In her speech, she mentioned about negative consequences happening when people tend to form stereotypes based on a single story, the one-sided argument. The single story blindfolds our eyes and prevents us from seeing the complexity, diversity, and similarities that construct our world, just as Adichie says “these negative stories is to flatten my experience and overlook the many other stories that formed me” (12:56). Listening to all her own personal experience and argument, I have become fully convinced and also see myself reflected in her stories. The single story can cause underlying and harmful impacts not only on personal issues but also on the global scale.

Often times the person writing the new story is unable to give a full representation of the situation at hand simply because they do not have the experiences of someone who has actually been a part of the group of people that were affected. Is the person writing the story has studied the culture and rituals of the people they will be able to give a clearer understanding of the story.Today many news stories are given from the point of view of someone on the outside looking in. However, I believe if they were written by someone who understood the culture of the people group they are talking about they could turn it into a story that is looking from the inside out. When people read a story that is in the perspective of the people that are experiencing changes, because of this I believe readers differently towards the dilemma at hand. For example, many people want to migrate from Syria into America because of all the chaos in their homeland. Many Americans, however feel that taking in Syrian refugees could be dangerous because they could possibly be a terroristic threat to America. I believe people feel this way because they have not been exposed to the fight that every Syrian is forced to grapple through every day. Most of the articles about Syrian refugees fail to recognize

I watched this TedTalk on 6/16/2016, and the name of that TedTalk is Uber’s plan to get more people into fewer cars. The video was filmed on February 2016, and the speaker is Travis Kalanick, the co-founder of the peer-to-peer file sharing company Red Swoosh and the transportation network company Uber. The purpose of this memo is to understand the goal that Uber is trying to achieve.

Ethnic minorities, also fall victim to stereotyping, whereby the actions of a small selection of the ethnic group are seen to represent the entire group. “The roles in which ethnic minorities have been developed in media texts have tended to be stereotypical, constructing a narrow and generalised version of the lives and identities of such populations.” For

I think the Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” was eye-opening and a little daunting. As far as the eye-opening part, it was amazing to think about how often people assume a single story and not just about race. I remember I had a professor talk about how when he was at dinner parties or functions that he would talk around the single most asked question, “What do you do?” Because not only do we look at a person’s skin or clothes, hear their accent, or see a religious symbol from their neck and immediately classify them but we also have a pressing need to know what people do so that we can place them in the appropriate box. The difference between the single story of being a writer or an author, a teacher or a professor, a cook or a chef, is a part of our

Another example of this could be seen in Portelli’s Death of Luigi Tratsulli, which illustrates how false memory plays a role in a major event that occurred in Italy (1991). The government issued response was short and objective; it did not bring in the opinions or words of the workers. The same can be said about a majority of the records when describing the struggles of African Americans. One does not know the struggles they went through, neglecting how these people felt. Yow also discusses the importance of the narrator in her tenth chapter of Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Here, she discusses how one should treat the narrator to achieve the information they need without insulting them (Yow, 2014b). This is needed for the African American people as well, because a large portion of their story is still unknown to a majority of the public. They have faced many struggles and trials, and should be treated with respect when one is trying to learn about

Throughout a lifetime people hear thousands of single stories from people, places, and things. This makes the passing of information very dangerous. A single story means, a limited viewpoint, or only seeing something from one angle. As proved in many cases, this is very dangerous in knowing the whole story from every perspective. In many cases the source you are hearing this from may have opinions or facts beyond the point adjusting your way of thinking. The dangers of singles stories was noted by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She had a first hand experience with this situation. As a child in Nigeria she was always reading english books. Appropriately, the national language of Nigeria is english, so it is likely that those were the books available. Later Chimamanda got ahold of African books and this completely changed her mindset, and realized she was only receiving stories from english perspective. This was one of her first encounters with single story. Later when she moved to America for school her she encountered a similar situation but rather someone else experiencing a single story. In her university Chimamanda had a roommate, this roommate was not from Nigeria. When Chimamanda was living with her the roommate was very surprised but her ability to speak perfect english, that she didn’t listen to “tribal” music, and that she could use a stove. Chimamanda believed this to be very odd that someone thought of her like that, but then she realized it was something similar to

Before African writers emerged, the world viewed Africa as “‘the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization”(Adeche, 1977, p.3) Joseph Conrad’s idea of a civilized nation is Europe, but his ignorance towards other forms of civilizations, lead Conrad to publish Heart of Darkness. Conrad’s interpretation of Africa in Heart of Darkness, being the only one at the time, created the daunting beastial stereotype of Africa. Though Conrad’s story does not entirely embody Africa today, his opinions still sway the minds of Americans today. Similarly, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie encounter a like situation where she fell victim to the single story of Africa. When arriving at an American Adichie’s roommate immediately feels pity for her. When Adichie questions her assumptions she highlights the impoverishment present parts of Africa based on a newspaper article she previously read. Adichie roommate's lack of knowledge prompted her to form a false opinion about African based on one story. When we only embrace one story, we fail to embrace the stories of

We’ve all experienced a “single story” many times. Whether it’s the belief that all people that are from Africa are poor, all politicians are corrupt, all Mexicans come into this country illegally, or that all illegal immigrants are from Mexico or maybe even that America is just a bunch of lazy, obese people that don’t move. You see, all these are stereotypes that really are just assumed by outsiders because of what they hear from people, the media and other sources. The majority of these principles are from the media. However, with that we need to understand that the media tends to make stories more dramatic, just to get the ratings up, which looks good for them. If it’s just simply receiving these stereotypes from others, these people usually don’t look to investigate these traits and just assume that these sources are right. To simply put this way, they only see the one side of the story because that’s more dramatic, even though the majority of the time these “single stories” are not true. To be honest, I use to believe that all the “single story” principles as a child, but, as I have grown up I tend to realize that these stories aren’t true all the time and that there are other sides too.

Before people can appreciate, respect, and diminish the fear of different cultures; the representation of stereotypical views needs to eject from the media's portrayal. Cultural groups in U.S. Society need to have an unambiguous perceptive of what stereotyping means and how it appears. Namely, history, the media, and movies demonstrate stereotyping, and over time, it becomes part of a narrative and anticipates negative perceptions of minorities. Various cultures categorize as being wrong, evil, untrustworthy and deviating from the norm of the dominant culture. The inclination continues in several areas with bigotry and prejudice leading to violence and discrimination. Stereotyping regularly comes about because of prompts, biases, and fanaticism.

Pulled from the excerpt of Improving Your Storytelling, the chapter is centralized on the idea of allocating attention. The author writes that their attention is typically divided amongst four different areas including the story itself, the audience being told, themselves, and a linking portion referred to as judgment. The last part is what can be inferred from other components together. Often these remain unconscious and lack any investigation as to whether or not one thing is weighing too heavily, easily distracting you for instance. Attention and where it is directed to should remain flexible and can vary from performance to performance depending on different variables. The environment is also a constraint that should be noted. The idea of chunking attention to many directions is a technique that might prove valid later on when preparing for a speech, and not only at the moment of presentation.

The author’s opinion about the role of the media and their responsibility to inform people and help them to “care” about others who are different is,”Tanzanians are ‘people like us’. They may be a third world away but they’re human beings, and our shrinking world makes it increasingly scandalous for us to pretend they’re not there.” I agree with

There was once a time in my life where I had judged a certain racial group by a ¨ single story¨. Social media had altered the appearance of the Muslim community. Muslims were altered to appear as terrorists, suicide bombers, and a great threat to the United States. Because of social media altering the Muslims´ appearance, this had made me view Muslims in a very negative manner. I saw Muslims as the way they were portrayed by the internet, a group of terrorists, suicide bombers, and a threat to our country. However, my false opinion had soon changed when I met a Muslim in person, she was the kindest woman I had ever met. I had also taken a liking to her culture as well meeting her family and getting to know them well had completely changed my