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Chimamanda Adichie's Speech: The Danger Of A Single Story

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In her speech, “The Danger of a Single Story” Chimamanda Adichie states, “Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” Single stories of different cultures, people, and places have been used to express opinions and facts for centuries. A single story, true or not, has so much power over the impression things make on us, and it many times leads us to false judgements. Whether it be the single story told of Africa or the girl you pass in the hallway everyday, everyone makes perceptions because of an individual story. Everyone has been judged and has judged in one way or another. I have witnesses several instances where people have accepted only one story of a person or place and have been completely false. Others around me accept single stories everyday. The media only represents one side of the story and this causes us to only see one perspective. It shows Mexicans as illegal immigrants and Muslims as terrorists. It represents white teenagers as school shooters and african americans as gang members. It only shows us the poverty of Africa and the social media scandals from Russia. The news forces us to only see that side. The perspectives we are kept from seeing are detrimental to understanding the complete situations. The news doesn’t show us the hardworking hispanics looking for a

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