Week 8: Response to “The Danger of A Single Story” (Winny Wang)

After watching the TED Talk, what impresses me the most is how a single story is told by and to more than a single person—the danger that exists in telling and forming a single story is very common and invisible, which means people are used to it while can’t see the problem in it.

By elaborating what danger that single story has, the speaker actually answers the question about diversity and its significance. Even till now, there are unimaginable scale of people doubting and questioning the significance of diversity, as well as many related policies. People question why school administration should think about diversity, and sometimes administration department would consider diversity over other elements such as individual academic performance. Or in other times, people don’t understand the influence behind the use of language of a published book. It should be seen that such people dismiss the danger of a single story.

It is natural reaction that people pay more attention to what they are used to, or in some cases, the more dominant situation. However, even though nowadays the world is more connected than ever, many people can still be largely biased because they are unable to receive critical knowledge. This is actually very sad in my point of view. The creation of a single story attributes that some people are less concerned about real situation of people in other societies; they can easily find information through various media, but instead, they choose to form unreal images of real people, fix diverse people into a single frame. This is irresponsible, disrespectful, and more a sad fact everyone is facing now.

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