The Danger Of A Single Story

Throughout the world, people have always and will always judge each other based on their skin tone, their accent, their home country or other obvious features that we immediately see or hear about them. We often formulate our opinions of these people based on our first impressions of them. In 2009, Civil rights activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses her time on her Ted-Talk to deliver her resonating speech “The Danger of a Single Story.” During her world-renowned speech, Adichie discusses human relationships, how we, as humans, interact with one another and treat each other. Adichie establishes her argument with one powerful metaphor describing common stereotypes as ‘single stories’ to demonstrate how people are affected by being judged based

She begins with a short description of her family’s childhood house-boy, Fide. While describing Fide, Adichie notes that “his family was very poor... Their poverty was my single story of them” (Adichie 2:58). Adichie gives an anecdote of her personal life, describing one time in her childhood when she judged a family solely on their poverty. To further her anecdotal evidence, Adichie describes the beginnings of her life with her college roommate in the USA. While portraying her early relationship with her roommate, Adichie argues that “She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove” (Adichie 4:44). Adichie gives another anecdote about her beginnings in the USA, and about how her roommate assumed that, since she was from Africa, it was impossible that Adichie was anything more than a primitive savage. By giving numerous anecdotes primarily about her early life and the single stories that she encountered or experienced, Adichie describes the commonplace nature of the single

By asking thought-provoking questions of her audience such as: “What if my mother had told us that Fide's family was poor and hard working?” (Adichie 14:08) and “What if my roommate knew about my Nigerian publisher?” (Adichie 14:33), Adichie revisits her initial anecdotes with additional factors to change the scenario showing how people’s thinking will change if they learn the stories of the people they are around. She argues that in real-world relations, ignorance is not bliss; knowing more about each other helps us form a more complete and distinguished opinion of each other. In the heart of her speech, Adichie asks rhetorical questions to make her audience realize how their opinions of each another change as they learn more about the