The Danger Of The Single Speech Summary

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. After spending a considerable amount of time in the United States, Adichie realized, “If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves, and wanting to be saved”. When I heard this quote said something clicked in me. This was the first time I had begun to see what perspective could do. I realized that people, especially in larger more powerful countries, tell small parts of the story.

At first, I thought that meant it was not our fault for seeing things this way as it was all we were shown, but when I thought about it in the sense of a painting, I knew it was our fault. I realized that just like with a painting in real life if we only zoom in on one small aspect of something, we should be able to tell things are missing, that the painting is incomplete and there must be more to it. If we are able to tell there is something more it is our job, as a person, to figure out what it