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Stereotypes In America

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The United States of America is a very diverse society. Today, minorities make up fifty percent of our population (US Census Bureau). However, there are still misconceptions and stereotypes about these minorities. A Pakistani man may have amazing stories and content to show but his audience may not be able to see through his accent. An African American man could be murdered but receive no attention while a Caucasian man is more likely to. A woman from Nigeria that comes from a wealthy background simply receives pity when she immigrates to the America due to a concrete image about her continent. Minorities in the United States are still fighting to be heard and represented but are ignored due to them not fitting the mold of “normal” and stereotypes. …show more content…

Although it wasn’t the conventional idea of “normal”, they wanted his minority group to be recognized through the powerful letter. While this was all taking place, a Black rookie cop was listening in on the class and spoke “"Most times when you out on the street and something comes down you do one of two things. Over-react or under-react. Now, if you under-react then you can get yourself kilt. And if you over-react then maybe you kill somebody” (Jordan, 167). This, however, was not a mere case of overreacting. There are no justifying deaths due to stereotypes about …show more content…

Adichie immigrated to America at age 19 to attend college and became an immigrant. Her roommate was very shocked by her since she spoke English so fluently and had the same music taste as her. She was ignorant because she had only heard of the stories of the poor. Adichie was stereotyped into the demeaning molds of the American people. When many think of Africa, they think of starving families that live in tribal villages with no electricity, when the multiple countries in Africa have beautiful landscapes and people live in cities. The minority of immigrated Nigerians and other immigrants from Africa are patronized and stereotyped. Some Americans cannot grasp the concept that Adichie fit into their ideal of “normal” when she came from Nigeria, where you’re supposed to be in poverty. This is what is considered “normal” in Africa as defined by America and demonstrated by Adichie’s roommate and a professor she had in college. “[I] had a professor, who once told me that my novel was not "authentically African."- the professor told me that my characters were too much like him, an educated and middle-class man.-Therefore they were not authentically African” (Ngozi Adichie). Stereotypes like these keep Americans close-minded and ignorant about

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" I believe that Adichie’s story is very accurate in the way humans perceive what they think they know, as the truth and the only truth. Racism and ignorance about another country by what we see through media and images. As Chimamanda Adichie says, “Show of people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become”. Her powerful understanding of outsider viewpoints in opposition to real life situations makes me look at many cultures in a different way, to view single stories as ill-informed

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an African storyteller from Nigeria. She’s the author of many books such as the “purple Hibiscus, half of the yellow sun and Americana.” Giving her the standing ovation in the “New York notable Book and people, Black issues and National book critics circle award for fiction, and the Chicago tribune heartland prize for fiction. “ ( ) Adichie gave a heart filled informative speech at the TedEx global conference in England, “The Danger of a Single story,” recorded to have reached 10,000,000 viewers; Adachi used a sophisticated type of pathos throughout her speech to convey the importance of stereotype.

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At the start of the school year, we watched a Ted-Talk by Chimamanda Adichie called, “The Danger Of The Single Story”. In this speech, Adichie talks about her experience growing up in Nigeria and then moving to the United States. When she first moved to America, she was shocked by the way people treated her and thought of her. I distinctly remember one part of the speech when Adichie talked about how wherever Africa was brought up, attention immediately turned to her despite the fact she knew almost nothing many African countries like Namibia. She also talked about how people viewed her as uneducated, poor and uncivilized.

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The passage was a part of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s speech, “The Danger of a Single Story.” The speech, which was spoken in 2009 at a TED conference, called attention to how hearing only one story about a certain person or place, or letting stereotypes lead our judgement of a person or place, can lead to confusion and ignorance. I heard about the speech about two years ago, but only recently did I spend the time to listen to it. I decided to choose this speech because of how true it is to my life and the lives of everyone around me. We live in a world where the media tells us things that we almost automatically believe.

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She goes onto describe how those who are powerful (government officials, textbooks writers and editors, etc) are the same people who are crafting the story of the people who are different from them. The system of the powerful telling stories of those who are lower in wealth and status only allows for more separation. The storytellers are not able to witness the full side of the story and only end up telling the sides that they witness, which unfortunately, is of some of the hardships people in the area face. As Chimamanda put it, “tell the stories of the Native American’s arrows before you tell of the British colonization, and you will get a different story.” Like Chimamanda’s roommate did unto her, someone who has witnessed the single story that does not paint people from that area in a good light will most likely fall into the cycle of ignorance when it comes to dealing with not only Africans, but even people who come from third world countries where they’ve seen certain

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The world cannot appreciate the African identity unless they don 't embrace it themselves. It is also a message for non-Africans to remember their privileged histories and acknowledge its part in their social position in the present world as the issues of identity can not be addressed unless they look at the African community from the lens of their

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Adichie relays many stories from her childhood all the way to adulthood. These stories allow the audience to connect with Adichie on a personal level, creating pathos. For example, Adichie talks about how her college roommate was oblivious to fact that Africans speak English and listen to American pop music. This allows the audience to see the dangers of a single story from the perspective of someone affected by a single story. The anecdotes also provide ethos by establishing credibility.

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