The Danger Of A Single Story By Adichie Summary

In “The Danger of a Single Story,” Adichie talks about stereotypes, or single stories. Adichie explains social class and stereotypes. Adichie explains social class by telling the story of Fide, her family’s houseboy. Fide and his family were very poor compared to Adichie’s middle class family, and Adichie also explained that her mother would use Fide as a reference to poor people, for example, when Adichie would not finish her food, her mother would say, “don’t you know people like Fide’s family have nothing.” So Adichie talks about how even in places like Nigeria, there is social class and that not everyone is poor like most people think. Adichie also talks about single stories, or stereotypes. First she explains how all the books she read as a child were
When a person is stereotyped they feel that they are not respected as they are judged because of a stereotype that is connected to their ethnicity or race. The second danger is it makes the idea of human equality seem impossible to understand for most people. If stereotypes and racism continues to exist, the myth that is race will continue to haunt people around the world and will never feel like humanity as one and equal. The third danger is that it puts emphasis on differences. If people continue to focus on stereotypes, they will always see the differences, mostly bad, in people but never the similarities and the good in other people and with that, there can never be a connectedness in different people. Adichie’s roommate had a single story of Adichie, and it was that she was a stereotypical African. Adichie’s roommate asked her how she knew English so well, but Adichie then told her that Nigeria’s official language is English, she also thought Adichie listened to tribal music and didn’t know how to work a stove. Adichie even says that her roommate felt pity for Adichie even though she was well