USA is not exactly famous for intelligent people or people really having any real understanding of ethnicity or culture. Also, USA has this very odd black community that is founded on some sort of rootless sense of "blackness", in other words countless of different ethnicities blended together from all around Africa are being labelled as one group based on superficial qualities suhc as skin tone. These people have almost completely lost any real sense of ethnicity, unlike this Nigerian person that has a real cultural identity unlike these yank ex-slave black people that need to draw their sense of self from their sad past of the rootless oppressed existence of USA altogether. I can only begin to imagine how it must feel to be one of these people, no real ethnicity, no real culture, no real heritage, just this big nowhere on what they must try to build some identity on. Not that it is any different for "whites" in USA.

Boy, Chimamanda Adichie makes such a pervasive problem in media so clear. Bias. Ethnocentricity. Stereotyping. She's right in that it can be terribly dehumanizing.

When I lived in Syria for a few months, I watched a lot of BBC World because it was in English and my Arabic was shamefully bad. I distinctly remember seeing the end of a short feature on BBC World about a day in the life of a Southeast Asian family that had moved countries or something. It showed how they coped, how they practiced Islam in their new country, how they were happy together no matter where they were. It was a typical human interest piece, but my jaw dropped when I saw the family praying (Islamically) together and off-handedly mentioning how they were happy practicing Islam in their new country before moving on to talk about the issue at hand. This showed three things:

1.) Islam being practiced casually by a loving family.
2.) That practice being normalized (aka it was just a piece of the family's identity, not the entirety of it).
3.) That practice being shown as a positive thing without it being sensationalized.

I was raised Muslim in America, I've been praying daily since I was in 8th grade, and Islam is something most of my family practices happily but doesn't make a bit deal about. Yet this human interest piece, which simply showed what I'd been living my entire life, completely shocked me because I'd never seen anything remotely like it on American TV or movies. I suddenly felt...validated? Humanized? I didn't have a word for it; I teared up and I didn't know why. And I'd always thought all those Western images of scary Muslim men, battered Muslim women, terrorists, and "othered foreigners" weren't getting to me, even though everyone in my life knew those stereotypes weren't true.

"The single story" is such an insidious destructive force, and no matter how strong we think we are, it can still chip away at you. It's like the difference between having a friend who makes sexist jokes but assures you he's kidding and a friend who looks at him blankly because HE DOESN'T EVEN GET THE JOKE. We're so used to the former that the latter blows our minds, even when it shouldn't because THE LATTER VALIDATES OUR OWN BASIC EXPERIENCES. I'm so glad Chimamanda Adichie articulated this concept so beautifully.

I feel like I should make an on-topic comment- I LOVED LOVED LOVED this video. It sums up what I've been struggling to illustrate in my own life. I realized how I lumped "poverty-stricken nations" together, and how others saw only that "single story" about people who looked like me.

Chimamanda Adichie rocks my socks!

Her story about her college roommate makes me remember the first time Shakira appeared on TRL and Carson Daily asked her how she was enjoying America and getting used to the ATMs and Burger Kings. She graciously said they have ATMs and Burger Kings in Colombia and that yes, she was enjoying her visit to New York, which she always enjoyed. I remember feeling so embarrassed for Carson Daily, and for all of us. It's true that Americans as a whole have so much to learn about this world. Although this is not a uniquely American problem. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I had to answer a lot of strange questions just like Carson Daily's, but about America. Questions like, do you have peanuts in America?, or you must be so hot here because your country is so cold (I'm from Florida and was really ok with the heat in Mozambique). It's a worldwide problem, sure. But Americans need to do better.

I've had lots of people tell me excitedly that they knew someone who was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. A sister or cousin or friend. And when I ask where, in what country?, most people couldn't say. Just somewhere in Africa. I shutter to think that my own family thought I was just somewhere in Africa even when I had sent home maps circling my town. If it mattered to me, I can only imagine how frustrated Mozambicans or Nigerians or Senegalese feel when people act like they've never even heard of their country.

I caught myself in this fallacy when I finally read some of the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" books (set in Botswana), after resisting them for years because I assumed any book set in Africa would be depressing because it would be about miserable people. I read one and discovered that it was not about miserable people but about . . . people. Honest and dishonest people, smart and silly people, people in love, people making tea and going about their daily lives.

Great video and thank you so much for your own personal stories, Maggie Heater and Julia! This is why I love this site.

She makes such a good point;however I find it curious how resistant the mainstream seems to be of allowing more than "just one story" to be told when it involves any group that is not the mainstream culture.  Just look at movies and television, look at the commercials and you'd be surprised how seldom you actually see a unique or different perspective.