The danger of a single story

LINK TO VIDEO IN TITLE

Ok, so the link in this post links to a Youtube video that pretty much has nothing to do with economics or government, but it is an excellent video. The video is of Chimamanda Adichie's speech at a conference. She talks about her personal experience with stereotyping, but I found the way she told her story really interesting. She is an educated woman from Nigeria, and her experience is both enlightening and fun to listen to. Basically, she talks about the danger of a "single story". She uses "single story" to describe people's perceptions of other cultures, and how we often view things we are unfamiliar with in a very narrow way. For example, many people think of all African people as poverty stricken people who desperately need outside help. Her experience as an African child was quite different.

The most recent example I could think of was about the Olympics. I was watching a skiing competition, and found myself sincerely surprised that an Australian skier was the reigning medalist. After all, Australia is a land of kangaroos and deserts, is it not? It took me a while to completely wrap my head around the fact that there probably is snow somewhere on the entire continent, and that's when I realized how I had stereotyped this athlete. Of course, I then found out the guy also has Canadian citizenship, and my stereotyping mind went right back to its old ways, but you get the point.

Anyway, I know the video is really long, but it is completely worth watching, so if you have 20 free minutes, it would be an excellent use of your time.