The more traveling one does the more one begins to realize how skewed the media's narrative is about other countries around the world.
I've lived outside of my native country of the U.S. for many years now and have traveled extensively long enough to see so clearly how biased a culture can become towards other countries when all they hear about those cultures are a single story.
My travels have taken me to many of the places my country warns me about and my experience has always been completely and drastically different then what is reported in the news and popular culture.
Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells her story of how we can be programmed for prejudice through the repeated soundbites the media programs us with.
To hear her tell it in this TED talk will open your eyes to a deeper truth of how we are more similar then we are led to believe. I only wish that classrooms and universities around the world would educate us like this video does about how much more similar we are regardless of what culture we come from.
The Danger Of A Single Story - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Where have you traveled only to find the people and culture was not like anything you thought it was going to be? Tell us in the comments below.
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When I read the title I felt interested because of the fact of you sharing something about the topic of stories, I thought from the perspective of music. Her story is amazing, and I am not actually sure about how many people can actually relate with it... For example, she repeating the appearance of the characters in the stories she read. Actually she says she had no necessarily and African identity before being in the U.S. I also write since I was little, but not only when writing kids repeat to fit, as when you remember we used to draw houses. She made me think that having different cultural roots is a factor that possibly makes you not judging necessarily based only in the differences, and what happens is that you see differences but not verbalize them, so it gives you more time to actually see before having an opinion. But she says that stories are important, and sometimes having an early opinion means about our creativity... So...
Very nice listening to her words. Now I want to know some contemporary Nigerian music.
Thanks for this share.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I shared it because her words held some truth to me. I travel a lot and love to explore different cultures. I have learned from these experiences that my culture where I was born often does not understand other cultures very well and have mistaken ideas about those cultures. It's good to see people in their native environment and it has broadened my perspective on people.
No matter how different we seem from the outside, inside we all have so many similarities. It's good to focus on our commonality as opposed to our differences. This brings us all closer together.
You are right, people who never traveled sometimes judge other countries without even being in them. I'm from Algeria and I live in Russia for more than 8 years. I've met a lot of people that tell things about both countries without really knowing that from their experience, but just from hearing that from one single story. Even people in all the world judge Russia and Arabic countries with what they heard but not from real stories from different people or without visiting themselves. It's also a kind of racism and it's so sad that's stil exists in our modern time ... .
It's really sad and I see it all over the world especially in the U.S., however, there are those who have woken up from this slumber and have begun to see the light. There is hope.
In 2009 the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a fabulous TED talk called “The Danger of a Single Story.” It was about what happens when complex human beings and situations are reduced to a single narrative: when Africans, for example, are treated solely as pitiable poor, starving victims with flies on their faces.
Her point was that each individual life contains a heterogeneous compilation of stories. If you reduce people to one, you’re taking away their humanity.
American politics has always been prone to single storyism — candidates reducing complex issues to simple fables. This year the problem is acute because Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the giants of Single Storyism. They reduce pretty much all issues to the same single story: the alien invader story.
Every problem can be solved by finding some corrupt or oppressive group to blame. If America is beset by wage stagnation it’s not because of intricate structural problems. It’s because of the criminal Mexicans sneaking across the border or it’s because of this evil entity called “the banks.”
This is not really your comment. You just copied it from the internet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/opinion/the-danger-of-a-single-story.html
That is not allowed on Steemit ( it's plagiarism) unless you link to your source.