One of the things I have observed through my many travels and interaction with people is how we humans judge others by a single story. We assume that because someone is from a particular place or ethnic group then what we know about that group must be true as concerns the person. This is how stereotypes arise and we continue to perpetuate them by using them against people or places we don’t know. These single stories are told within a country and within a continent and so you find in the same country or continent certain stereotypes about a particular people based on a single story used to define the people.

These single stories are told in a way that defines who exercises power by how the stories are told and as a way of suggesting superiority or inferiority depending on who is telling the story.  The single stories can be used to rob people of their dignity, malign them and even dispossess them. For example the story told about Africa is that of catastrophe defined by civil wars, poverty, diseases and failed states waiting for some Western power to save them.  The same story is repeated on and on and it has become the defining story of Africa. I was shocked by the kind of questions I got asked when I came to the USA. Someone asked me what I did before and I told them I was practising law. They were shocked and asked “you have lawyers in Africa?” My son’s teachers were confused that a 6 year old boy from Africa could speak and read English at the level of their third grader when he had just arrived in America.  Many have the belief that Africa is a country and therefore everything is the same in “this country” called Africa.

All these perceptions are based on a single story told of Africa. A story that is aimed at robbing Africa of her dignity and sustain the view of it being a “dark continent”.  Yes, Africa has had its share of problems. Yes, Africa has poor people and yes Africa has plenty of wild life but that is just part of the story. What about the story of  the entrepreneurs and creative people in Africa? Of the many educated professional people wheeling and dealing locally and internationally? What about the many creative buildings and beautiful houses? Why is this story not told?

This single story telling does not apply to Africa alone. The first time I visited America was in 1990 and it was in New York City where I was attending a conference.  I was shocked to see homeless people living in carton boxes in the center of the city. I was further shocked and confused when a lady came begging me for a dollar. You see the story told of America is that of wealth, power and prosperity and nothing about poverty.  I then came to California in 2000 and was shocked to find there is a place called skid row in Los Angeles where people lived and died on the street; where children are exposed to a life of abject poverty, drugs and violence. But perhaps the greatest shock for most people was when Katrina exposed a part of America that the world was unaware of.  

I was embarrassed and felt cheated the first time I visited Beijing, China. I was attending a conference and we were told to carry water and such things only to arrive to a modern city that was way beyond what we had been made to believe. You see the single story that has been told of china for a along time is that of oppression and little development. A place where there is no freedom of worship or association. This single story does not reveal that in fact there is freedom of worship and Christians can worship God without pretense as long as they restrict it to the worship places. The single story of oppression and lack of freedom ignores the story of the talented people who in spite of their government succeed against all odds. A nation who although contains a third of the world’s population has managed to feed its people.

The danger of a single story is that it enhances our differences instead of accepting our similarities.  Just like Africa has poor people so does America or any other nation of the world. I have recently come to understand there is corruption in America just as there is in Africa. The single stories create stereotypes about a people. They may bear some truth but are incomplete stories of the people.  Complete stories of a people can be used to empower and repair broken dignity. Let us therefore tell the complete story and not a single story.