Ted Talk The Danger Of A Single Story Analysis

It is important to continue to diversify these media industries because they play such an important role in our everyday lives. The United States is a country that is becoming increasingly more diverse and it is necessary that our media industry reflects that. Through print and broadcast journalism, advertising, public relations, television and film, one’s perception of the world is formed. A person’s story is best told by that individual and the same thing applies to media in terms of race. If a white person is telling the story of an African-American, the reality of that story may be misconstrued. As previously stated, the media helps to form one’s perception of the world, therefore if the media promotes one idea about a certain people group, then it may be difficult to ignore the bias as it can become subconciously ingrained in an individual.

Just as author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says in her TED Talk The Danger of a Single Story, “…show a people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again, and that is what they become”. The “single story” is what needs to be avoided across all sectors of media. As a Black woman, this is an important issue to me. What if I only saw films where Black people were depicted in a negative way or in down-trodden positions? How does that affect one’s self-perception? This is not to say that Black people (or people of any other race for that matter) do not exist in such a way but rather there needs to be diverse portrayals of Blacks because we are a diverse