In the Tedtalk by Chimamanda ngozi adichie she gives us an insight about her experience of her main topic. Adichie shares her likes in literature as a child which consisted of british stories and white characters and give a completely different perspective but later on read books by and about African authors that made her feel more comforting and connected to the books. Adichie then realized the ignorance and the miss information people had about black people and later came to the realization that she unknowingly was seeing mexican people in the negative perspective the US media covered them to be like and visiting mexico showed her that they were nothing like that. Adichie as well says how she was shocked to her the ignorance of her white roommate toward her and her race.
In my opinion i definitely agree with Adichie because we all have a certain mindset about certain races and see them and judge them as one and not as the individuals that they are.For example when she realized she had a negative perspective of Mexicans because of everything that was being said of them being immigrants and only coming here to take as much advantage of the welfare system. This gave Adichie the realization that, that is not who they really are when she visited mexico and saw all the kind hard working people. I can definitely agree with Adichie’s argument because i too have been put in a situation where people have talked poorly about mexican people without knowing I’m mexican myself. With these claims they might not be all a lie but it definitely doesn’t apply to every mexican. Having the mindset about a single story perspective on people and the danger today is that we live a society were you have to watch what you say, how you say it and all of the above. It is very easy now in days to get misinterpreted by people even when you mean no harm. The more knowledge we have the better it will be for ourselves and the people around us which i feel is a reason professor Barnes assigned this reading. I believe she might be using this topic as an eye opener for us so we can see peoples perspectives and try to connect and to be able to try and show us that sometimes even ourselves can be exposed to the single story topic and try to expand our minds to reflect and understand it.
3 thoughts on “Conversation 2: Summary and Response”
Hello Diana , I totally agreed with you , human being tend to judge and criticize only by what we hear or see at first sight and we don’t try to go deeper and look further. Many people who emigrate to other countries in order to have a better future are always treated as a “single story” and are often less appreciated and this destroys dignity that any human being can have. This can affect many aspects of our life but specially the social one , it make equality difficult and emphasizes our differences.
I agree with you 100% as someone who is born and raised in Africa its crazy how majority of people are very not only blind but ignorant about the things hear or seen on the internet about not any about African but some country like you mention Mexico, Syria and so many other countries. People need to stop that kind of mindset is better learn about something in order to kind of get the knowledge about that particular thing no matter what its.
The summary was done short but, effective for anyone to understand “The Danger Of a Single Story” . Had main points of Adichie’s story. No opinions and just sum up the story. Used the 5Ws in some extent. Summary helps me understand better on how i can improve my summaries, I felt like i typed to much and should cut it shorter but, effective.
I agree with Diana’s response, with people’s mindset of others in race and not the individual. I’m Mexican-American and I hear and see how people view other Mexicans, everyone could use more empathy and knowledge. I agree with why Professor Barnes assigned this story, and I enjoyed it!