Sunday, January 8, 2012

The Danger of the Single Story by Chimamanda Adichie

With all the negative politics surrounding Mexican immigrants, this speech by Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, may help all of us construct a much more complete view. In it she talks about “the danger of the single story,” the stereotypes that people use to define other people. Also, if you click on the subtitles tab at the bottom, you can read the speech translated into Spanish!

“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.”

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_st...

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