“The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story . . . The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk addresses the danger of the single story we assign other groups.
“It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never been clearer than in the view of Africa from the American media, in which we are shown poverty and conflicts without any context.”
Affording the MFA 