In “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores how a single perspective breeds stereotypes, blocking people from regaining paradise. Adichie suggests that someone with authority to create dominant narratives misrepresents a people to justify their mistreatment. These biased single stories are powerful enough to seep into a person’s subconscious and influence their thoughts and actions towards the misrepresented party. My experiences resonate with Adichie’s claims regarding the dangers of a single story.
Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” can be summarized using the examples she uses. She begins by narrating how growing up while exposed only to British books narrowed her view of the literary world (Adichie 1). Consequently, when she began writing, all her characters were far removed from the reality of her own background. She believed that people who resembled her—black, Nigerian, and, by extension, African—could not exist in literature. She also notes that her mother repeatedly portrayed Fide’s family as poor and used them as the backdrop for every undesirable example she wanted to give. The author reveals her mother’s bias when she later learns that Fide’s family may have been poor by her mother’s standards, but they were hardworking and creative. Then she hops to the United States, where she witnesses how the mainstream media and authorities tell a mono-perspective narrative of Mexicans to justify their loathing and mistreatment in the US. Adichie’s experience of the portrayal of Mexicans in the United States mainstream media versus the reality in Guadalajara is eerily similar to what my uncle has endured throughout his adult life.
Like Adichie in Mexico, I have learned of the bias shrouding society’s perception of those branded as felons. I used to believe that the police kept us safe. I have watched countless movies portraying heroic actions by our security officers. I have also done some reading regarding the reformatory role of our country’s prison system and the extensive programs available to help ex-convicts reintegrate into society. I held on to these hopes long after hearing stories while growing up that I had an uncle who was serving a prison sentence after making very poor choices in life. My father never took me to visit him in jail and only brought him up whenever he did not like my new friends. “That’s how Uncle Tommy started,” he would say. “You might just end up like him if you’re not careful.” I was terrified and, until last year, feared for my uncle.
Uncle Tommy and I first met on my 11th birthday. We were casually introduced, but there was something in his eyes that struck my heart. I later learned that he slept on the streets since he had trouble finding a job. He had vivid memories of the terrified looks in the faces of his wife and three-year-old son when the police busted their door open and tackled him to the ground before handcuffing him. He also had scars from the numerous assaults he endured behind bars. His wife died of a heroin overdose a year after the arrest.
Today, the only thing society readily remembers about Uncle Tommy is that he is a felon. His employment opportunities narrowed to casual jobs since many potential employers did not trust an ex-convict. Nobody remembers why he was arrested, whether he had a fair trial or his experience as an inmate. The system deemed him unworthy, and everyone bought it without question, excusing whatever inhumane or unfair treatment he or his loved ones suffered and continued to endure after release.
Adichie’s experience with biased but dominant single narratives echoes my own. It baffles me why the police or the criminal justice system are allowed to cause unnecessary harm to ordinary people’s lives in order to apprehend one suspect for what appears to be exploitation rather than reformation. Maybe our stories about the justice system are not diverse enough, which is why the majority of those involved in it have to defer the possibility of ever experiencing paradise until the afterlife.
Work Cited
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” YouTube, uploaded by TED, 2009.