I’ve been reading my RSS feed and going down some rabbit holes online. Specifically on the topic of ‘single stories’.
These are essentially stereotypes (Etymology: ‘solid’ + ‘impression’) about a group of people, usually those-other-people-over-there, that we don’t really understand, and they’re kept alive by stories, that are never questioned, thereby erasing nuance. They then become self-perpetuating.
There’s a famous TED Talk you can watch from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, called The Danger of a Single Story where she talks about attitudes towards her, as an African.
And then her own biases she noticed, upon visiting Mexico.
It’s a fascinating topic and it got me thinking that it’s not just something that happens on a societal level, it happens for us, individually, too.