While watching the Ted Talk, The Dangers of a Single Story,
I was saddened to realize just how common the single story view is and how it
negatively impacts people. While reflecting on the Ted Talk, it reminded me of
one instance when something similar happened to me when I was abroad. Although
American media is pretty predominant in the world and tends to offer all kinds
of stories, I found that while I was in Australia there was one negative view
about Americans that was consistently brought to light. This negative view was
that all Americans carry around guns and are “trigger-happy”. On several occasions I had people ask me
questions like, “Why do all Americans carry guns?” or “Why is it a thing in the
States to shoot up schools?”. I
immediately responded defensively and asked why they would ever think that?
That’s when it occurred to me that when these bad things happened in the
states, the stories were highlighted in Australian media. In addition, there was also the contrast that
in Australia guns are illegal and thus most Australians I talked to had very
strong feelings against the fact that Americans could acquire a gun license. It
was very unfortunate to realize that because of the actions of some bad people,
some Australians were viewing Americans as a whole in a negative light.
No comments:
Post a Comment