By only associating negative aspects with one particular culture or race, we are directly inhibiting our ability to look at them with the same amount of respect, care, and appreciation that we look at our neighbors or friends with. At the end of the day, what separate one human being from another human being are our choices. The difference between Osama Bin Laden and I is that he can kill hundreds of human beings, and I can’t deliberately kill an ant. Beyond that, we all have the same basic needs as every human.
If we allow ourselves to believe that every Muslim makes the same choices as Osama Bin Laden, then people like Muhammed Ali Jinnah and Benazir Bhutto will quickly be forgotten. The knowledge we gain from single stories is false, but yet it represents so much of our knowledge of other cultures and countries. Ethnically diverse groups are important in our societies, a blend of cultures being much better and more powerful than a single culture. If we allow ourselves to simply accept the stereotypes that are handed to us because of media, then the respect that every individual deserves will slowly diminish.
The sense of one individual’s strength in comparison to another individual’s weakness will be heightened causing the idea of a global community to slowly disappear, and the idea of ego becomes more prevalent. The single stories presented in the media affect our perception. A few months ago, a television show Outsourced was broadcasted. While some episodes were funny, the way they presented India was borderline rude and was offensive to many Indian- American citizens.
It didn’t go unnoticed by the shows viewers, that the only “smart” guy was the white guy, while all of the Indians were presented as stupid people who needed to be guided in everything they did by the white guy from their love lives to their jobs. The Indian characters were continuously subliminally insulted and degraded whereas the white guy was constantly portrayed as the hero of the show. When I watched the show, I took it for its entertainment value because I know that in reality there are Indians that are extremely intelligent and capable of pronouncing Chicago correctly.
However, those who haven’t had any particular experiences with Indians beyond tech support and call centers will assume that Outsourced accurately represents what India looks like. Also, along with the picture of Slumdog Millionaire… the picture of India is definitely not a beautiful picture. While there is that aspect of India, it is not the only aspect. If only that feature is kept in mind, the perception of India and her citizens are negatively impacted, and will only harm our amalgamated wish to have a strong global community.
As much as I am a victim of single stories, I am also guilty of blindly believing in single stories. I too blindly believed in the single story of Africa before I watched this video. It’s important that when we make observations about other people, cultures, countries we keep in mind that our perception is affected by many influences and that perception should never be set in stone. Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge section.
