Caught up in Single Stories

My upbringing and schooling has influenced how I view the world. I grew up in a small predominantly white community which never really allowed me to see and experience much diversity. This unfortunately has previously trained my perceptions and realization of things to be oblivious to normal narratives and the dominant views that influence the world. I have also recently noticed how unaware I was about how power structures function in our society and the repercussions that come along with it. Despite growing up with these detrimental lenses, I plan to bring awareness to the classroom of how harmful it can be when you are not mindful of different perspectives and knowledge. In order to work against these biases we need to become conscious of how they are created and implemented in the first place. By understanding how they work and recognizing them, we can train ourselves to notice and stop them from happening in the future, as well as calling others out on it too. 

Chimamanda Adichie emphasizes in her TED Talk of how dangerous single stories can be, and how easy it is to be caught up in misrepresentation and labeling people and places as a whole. She admits that even herself has fallen victim to believing single stories, even as a Black woman from Nigeria who already experiences these awful stereotypes that have come as a result of single stories of Africa. Unfortunately, in my schooling, this type of single story of Africa was also present. When we discussed Africa it was about all the issues they faced regarding poverty, housing, education, facilities, etc., and tended to emphasize on programs that are trying to help such issues by bringing in people from “countries like ours,” to make a difference. We were never introduced to the “good stories and perspectives,” as Adichie puts it, of Africa which then makes it difficult for people to even understand that such things are possible when living in Africa. For instance in grade one our class was informed that we would have a new classmate who is coming from Africa. A young white girl, who came from a relatively wealthy family, entered our classroom which came as a shock to most because of the single stories we grew up hearing. We then found out that she is from South Africa, which has a large white population. This still did not help resolve the single story because we created a new single story that South Africa is the more rich and white populated part of the continent. In my schooling mainly the white settlers’ and people with power versions of the truth mattered. We did not have representation of other perspectives and their truths which could have prevented these harmful single stories we grew up believing.