The danger of a single story
Stine Krog 2.u
Risskov Gymnasium.
Boom boom. The sound of drums beating. The tribal music. African people dancing. Disguised behind the music and festiveness lies hunger and despair. This is Africa. In the meantime cars are driving through a city filled with lights, technology and well-educated people. This is Africa. There are two stories of Africa represented here. One is not more truthful than the other. Some people unfortunately only define Africa by a single story. This is a topic Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie(CNA) addresses with her TED-talk “The danger of a single story.”
This essay will contain an account of the phrase “The Single Story”, and an analysis of the way CNA engages the audience. It will furthermore discuss the term cultural ignorance.

CNA defines the single story as a term used when individuals define other individuals by a single story. She uses her own life experience to define the phrase. She starts by explaining how “…vulnerable we are in the face of a single story.” She refers to the single story she had of Fide’s family. She had always been told how Fide’s family was poor and didn’t have anything. Therefore she was very surprised when she went to Fide’s village, and discovered that Fide’s family could actually make something. Later in CNA’s life, she went to a university in the United States and found that the people had a single story of Africa and therefore thought that she was uneducated, and not even able to use a stove.
“My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complicated than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals”
This quote shows how she uses the term ”The single story” too explain the stereotypes that occurs between individuals due to a lack of knowledge.
The single story illustrates how our lack of cultural understanding will create stereotypes, which are hard to negate. We are convinced that people from Africa think and act in a certain way, and therefore everyone from Africa is the same. This is why CNA believes that one single story is dangerous.

The TED-talk is presented live by CNA in front of an audience. Her breathing throughout the TED-talk is very shallow, which indicates that she is nervous. She starts her TED-talk with her hands at her sides. This makes the impression that she is open to the audience, and it makes her seem balanced. She stays in this position throughout the TED-talk, and has no use of hand gestures. She does not engage the audience by her body language, but she engages the audience by using humour. She is repeatedly making the audience laugh. She is making the audience laugh by referring to her own life, but without consistently putting herself down. She uses anecdotes from earlier in her life related to the topic: “The single story.” They are laughing with her and not at her. It is clear that the use of humour relaxes- and brings her closer to the audience. CNA uses different forms of appeal In her speech. The most obvious one is pathos. She is appealing to the audience’s emotions by using stories that the listener can relate too. She makes the audience consider which single stories they have of for example Africa. CNA uses ethos by using her experiences to make the audience believe that she is reliable. Furthermore, she is addressing the audience by making them recognise themselves in the comments she makes. “The single story” can be put in context with cultural ignorance. Cultural ignorance is, according to CNA, caused by telling a single story about a particular person, race or place. She is convinced that cultural ignorance can be avoided if we substitute the single story with multiple stories about groups we have diminutive knowledge of. In opposition to CNA’s TED-talk is Kaila Colbin. She has written an article for the guardian where she describes ignorance as “The greatest gift of all.” Kaila Colbin considers ignorance as being a way to learn new things “We need to stop rewarding answers and instead reward the search for them.” If we were not ignorant we wouldn’t search for the answers. “The great gift of ignorance is a lifetime of learning.” CNA and Kaila Coblin do not completely disagree. They both believe we should be more open to other cultures, but while CNA experiences ignorance as being negative, Kaila Coblin describes it in a positive way.
Kaila Coblin writes that, “Without a culture of learning, of new experiences, we lose our ability to be creative.” And CNA states that she “…always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person.”

So according to Kaila Coblin, CNA and their quotes, they both believe that one should be more open to learn about other cultures. The idea of the “The single story” will be hard to defeat. There will always be someone, somewhere that will have a single story of either a person or a place. What we according to CNA and Kaila Coblin should do is to become more open and more willing to learn about other cultures. This will result in a better understanding of different cultures, and therefore an elimination of the single story. If we consider the single story as one of many stories that describe a person or a place, we will be able to abolish the stereotypes. http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2011/dec/28/creative-success-ignorance-learning

Sprog: Godt og sikkert. OBS: to/too

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