The Dangers Of A Single Story

Movies and entertainment outlets speak volumes about the current state of a nation’s culture. Cinematic creations in the United States allow small voices to be heard and controversial issues to be addressed. However, a repetitive and monumental issue continues to be addressed, yet continues to persist in our 21st century culture, racial inequalities. Since the inception of the United States, black men and women alike have been disenfranchised at the hands of the “white man” in America. Instead of continuing the conversation today, the issue is continually silenced referencing the successes and achievements of the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th century. Nonetheless, an unfortunate reality looms upon this great land; racially based systems and structures continue to exist in 2015 the in United States. This paper synthesizes three films focused on racial inequalities in different time periods. Separate but Equal (1991), Selma (2015), and Crash (2005) illustrate how influential the Civil War amendments are, while serving as an uncanny reminder of how the racial prejudices during the 20th century continue to exist in our great nation today. Needless to say our nation has made great strides, but still has a long way to go.

As human beings, we tend to not understand that what we see or hear about social media, television, books, etc. can guide us towards this one piece of the puzzle. Not knowing the rest of the puzzle creates the assumption of a single story. In her TED talk, Chimamanda Adichie has spoken about the dangers of only knowing a story which leads to stereotyping. By this being said, to what extent do we as a society form a single story about others? To answer this question, there is a great extent when people create their single stories about others because we make these single stories without even realizing it. Chimamanda is a mere example, a representative of how our society thinks and is treated  when making a single

I was very shocked to see how the video showed how the movie Birth of Nation and how race opporates in the U.S are still prevelant today. We are still living a place where people of color are still thrown under the bus for things either they did'nt commit or just because it can be done to them because they are considered a minority and are known as second class citizens. An yes Jim Crows Laws still exsist today in a more discrete form, however, alot of people see it as well. Only difference is now people can join together as a movement to seek some sort of justice. That will probably never happen, since issues such as them ones shown in the video have been going on for years and may still go on for years to come. I believe out of all the information

The speech “The Danger of a Single Story” narrated and written by Chimamanda Adichie is a series of overlapping stories and thoughts predominately discussing prejudice around the world. Though it is not our fault that we are only shown a single side of a topic, what we are exposed to is usually biased or lacking in full detail. Many people use what media may say or what they hear around them about a subject to make up their resolved opinion on the matter. Adichie's argument is effective because she overturns all that established knowledge and presents unique views on old ones to create an open minded take on the issue; moreover, Adichie uses humor, significant life experiences, and typical day-to-day discrimination to support her argument.

History, especially in regards to issues of race, is a repetitive thing. There are recurring events just with different faces, places, and circumstances consuming the individuals of the communities we live. Once where the black communities started to form their own progressive movements and make a name for themselves in America they are now regressing back to a time where justice for the black community only seems to be something we dream, hope, and fight for. Reading “The Fire this Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race” by Jesmyn Ward made me open my eyes to a different reality one that I think I tried to believe did not exist to appease the fantasy that one day we would all be seen as truly equals. In reality, we are not equals. We live in a world that constantly tries to demean people of

Birth of a Nation uses its histrionic plot to show how tangled destinies of a southern and northern family before and after the Civil War. It willingly portrays southern blacks as spiteful and uncivil, the northern whites as crafty, dishonest, and conceited, and the film’s southern whites as anguish recurrent radical and erotic mortifications at the hands of white northerners and black southerners before factually being saved by the thoughtful, Ku Klux Klan. The film is divided to show the different aspects of those two sides during this historical time. During this time Africans were coming to America and it started the reconstruction on our country. D.W. Griffith made this film to show us the reality of racism at this point in time.

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.

And in 1915 the NAACP held a nationwide campaign against the film by D.W. Griffifth called The Birth of a Nation. This film was made to glorify the Ku Klux Klan.

The Danger of a Single Story - A speech that was said by Chimamanda Adichie that inspired me to write this report.

Think back to when you were five years old. Were you sent to a boarding school with kids a couple years older than you? Were you persecuted and bullied for being a “redneck” or for just being who you were? Chances are, the answer to these questions should be “no”. However, a small little boy growing up in Africa during the mid-1990s can probably describe every single tortuous day that he went through in this situation. His name is Peekay, and he is the narrator in Bryce Courtenay’s award-winning novel, The Power of One. Peekay describes his life form being a small five-year old boy to a teenager. Along the way, he meets many mentors and friends, such as Hoppie Groenewald, a champion boxer,

In this movie the African Americans were treated nicely but in reality they did not feel this way. The masters mistreated their slaves but in the movie they were actually having conversations. There is a scene in the movie where a group of African Americans were shaking hands with the white Americans. The producer of the movie wanted to inform others that the “birth” of America was founded on the basis of equality rather than discrimination. If the producer of the movie did not show how the slaves were mistreated, the people will just see the world in only that point of view; the slaves’ point of view does not exist. Ruling countries oppressed both the undeveloped, barren places and the African Americans. The Birth of the Nation is a perfect example of a form of travel writing; the Americans wanted to inform others about America but this movie was only produced in their perspective. Rather than recording the reality, the produces or writers record history with the input of their own influences.

The history of African Americans in early Hollywood films originated with blacks representing preconceived stereotypes. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, stirred many controversial issues within the black community. The fact that Griffith used white actors in blackface to portray black people showed how little he knew about African Americans. Bosley Crowther’s article “The Birth of Birth of a Nation” emphasizes that the film was a “highly pro-South drama of the American Civil War and the Period of Reconstruction, and it glorified the role of the Ku Klux Klan” (76). While viewing this film, one would assert that the Ku Klux Klan members are heroic forces that rescue white women from sexually abusive black men. Griffith

In the speech, the Danger of a Single Story the writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells us the dangers of believing just one thing about a stereo type. In the speech Adichie repeats the phrase ‘single story’ as I think it is very important to her and by saying it repetitively she gets it to stick in peoples minds. I think the main point of the speech is to tell people the dangers of believing just one story about a country, a person or a religion etc. and to see past the stereotype we can be tricked into believing and instead see past it to see for example the person for who they are, for example, she as an eight year old girl believed a single story about their houseboy, Fide she says, ‘The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor... when I didn’t finish my dinner, my mother would say, “Finish your food! Don’t you know? People like Fide’s family have nothing.” So I felt enormous pity for Fide’s family. Then one Saturday we went to his village to visit, and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket made of dyed raffia that his brother had made. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor.’ This was her single story of Fide’s family, because all her mother had told her was that they were poor she did not see past that and had no idea that anyone poor was capable of creating something so beautiful.

Hollywood and the media continues to promote social stereotypes as the white male is portrayed as upper-middle-class professional who is family-oriented while African Americans are depicted as thugs, funny, maids, best friends, and servants. The media sacrifices objective depiction of races to gain better ratings and earnings. Further, in most movies, blacks are depicted as foolish, lazy, submissive, violent, animal-like, and irresponsible. The 1915 film The Birth of a Nation was one of the first films to feature a strong stereotype by portraying blacks as subhuman.

From the TED Talk video “The Danger of a Single Story,” I think that the speaker Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wanted to tell us that we need to read more and know different stories about one place because there are more than one story exist. We should not judge other without knowing themselves. Furthermore, she said that we should not easily believe everything we heard from media because they only give us one impression. I especially felt close to her when she described how she felt after she realized her American roommate teetered her as African not Nigerian. (4:13) Moreover, she had only a single story about Africa. (4:49) Those paragraph remind me when I was in college in New York, my American classmates did not know the differences between Japanese and Chinese or