The Danger of a Single Story
This TedTalk is about a girl from Nigeria, who has lived there up until she had to leave home to study abroad in the US. She talks about how she used to judge her new house boy because the only image she had of him was that he was poor. Then, when she went to college in the US, her roommate judged her based off of the idea that she is from Nigeria. However, as she got to know her, the roommate then realized that they have a lot of similarities.
Relating why she was telling these stories, she focuses on the fact that a single/ one sided story isn't going to lead to anything throughout the whole TedTalk. In my opinion, it is exactly like a story with different perspectives. Listening to only one side of a story, is as useless as having just one pair of a shoe. For example. the roommate was only listening to what she was hearing from the people around her, and seeing on social media. These were all a single story of how Africa is seen.
In addition, the way Africa is seen as a country is very similar to how Egypt and the Middle East are seen as well. If you talked to the majority of the people living in the west about how they think these places are seen. They would all think they are old countries that "go to school with camels" and "not have internet". They would be extremely surprised that the living dynamics are actually very very similar. That is because they are not interested enough to actually understand how they are, but would rather just hear what is said and believe thats true.
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