The Danger of a Single Story

 

While reading through the hand book for Module 3, I came across a TED talk around the subject of seeing scenarios from different perspectives. The TED talk was titled “The danger of a single story”. 

It was a woman form a middle class family in Nigeria. She talks about how she gained assumptions off people from a young age from reading books from British and American author’s. She believed that people like herself didn’t exist outside her country because there wasn’t books about African women and what they looked like and their back grounds. She also mentioned of her university roommate in America was shocked that she could speak English as she automatically assumed from what she knew of Africa and that she wouldn’t speak English.  She said that “as humans we are very impressionable of what we see, hear and read.” Especially children. What they witness growing up could have an impact of how they see the world as they are older. 

I think this is a really interesting point. What thoughts are our own and what comes from what we witness and open too within our society..... could this lead to unknowing biased decisions of our thoughts?

A way to over come this is to ensure you are reading from a wide selection of literature. Literature from round the world, from different perspectives, genders, ethicality backgrounds and ages in order to see scenarios from multiple stories. 

It's an interesting thought and reminder to keep an open mind when continuing research. Don't be biased on the research, only looking through things that you are known too. Keep it interesting, keep it different, and don't follow a single road. Main thing of all enjoy the journey of a different kind of research. 

I have attached the video if anyone is interested in a listen 😁