Americans are obese, gas guzzling, patriotic show-offs.
Africans live in mud huts and their children never wear any shoes.
Europeans are pampered sophisticates with no stress because they’ve got free health care and six weeks of vacation.
Asians are shy, passive geeks who excel at math and science.
All Hispanics are Mexican, and to be Hispanic you have to have tan skin, shiny black hair and a last name that ends in -ez. (Lopez, Perez, Rodriguez, etc.)
Human beings have a nasty little habit of sizing up other people, reaching a conclusion and having that conclusion become the “truth” about that particular group of people. Many of us are guilty of this. Even those of us who pride ourselves on being open-minded and progressive.
Check out this fascinating speech by Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist. In it she talks about “the danger of the single story,” the stereotypes that people use to define other people. The video below is almost 20 minutes long but it is definitely worth watching. If you can’t watch the whole speech, fast forward to 8:30 where she talks about visiting Mexico and her reaction to being there. (Also, if you click on the subtitles tab, you can read the speech translated into Spanish. Very nice.)
“I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara; watching the people going to work, rolling up to…the marketplace, smoking, laughing. I remember at first feeling slight surprise, and then, I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans, that they had become one thing in my mind: abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself. So that is how to create a single story: show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”
Americans are obese, gas guzzling, patriotic show-offs.
ResponderExcluirAfricans live in mud huts and their children never wear any shoes.
Europeans are pampered sophisticates with no stress because they’ve got free health care and six weeks of vacation.
Asians are shy, passive geeks who excel at math and science.
All Hispanics are Mexican, and to be Hispanic you have to have tan skin, shiny black hair and a last name that ends in -ez. (Lopez, Perez, Rodriguez, etc.)
Human beings have a nasty little habit of sizing up other people, reaching a conclusion and having that conclusion become the “truth” about that particular group of people. Many of us are guilty of this. Even those of us who pride ourselves on being open-minded and progressive.
Check out this fascinating speech by Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist. In it she talks about “the danger of the single story,” the stereotypes that people use to define other people. The video below is almost 20 minutes long but it is definitely worth watching. If you can’t watch the whole speech, fast forward to 8:30 where she talks about visiting Mexico and her reaction to being there. (Also, if you click on the subtitles tab, you can read the speech translated into Spanish. Very nice.)
“I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara; watching the people going to work, rolling up to…the marketplace, smoking, laughing. I remember at first feeling slight surprise, and then, I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans, that they had become one thing in my mind: abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself. So that is how to create a single story: show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”