TED Response

Chimamanda Adichie is my voice. She was able to speak exactly what I was trying to express for the past five years. Ignorance. Stereotypes. I remember how my mind was filled with these thoughts for ages and I finally decided to create a learning program to prevent these things in order to avoid bigger problems like discrimination. Unfortunately, after working for a year and a half on that project, I had to hand it over to my friend because I moved here.

The first time I've realized about the existence of ignorance was when I was in 4th grade - the moment when children start to identify themselves with a certain race, ethnicity, or nationality. Of course, me being Japanese played a huge role in my life.

All Asians eat dogs and monkey brains. All Asians are smart in math but terrible in English. All Asians are submissive and constantly dominated by their strict parents. These stereotypes are something that I hear practically every day (no exaggeration). The part that confused me the most at that time was none of them were actually true for me. They could’ve been true for many Asians, yet they were not “complete.” People assumed this applied to every Asian including me. Just like what Adichie said, people only see one side of a story of your “group”. They see many versions of that story and tend to overgeneralize. Why is it that they only see one side of a story? For one, it’s because newspapers, literature, and the Internet only show what the audience wants to see. No one is interested in reading an article about an Asian who is mediocre at math, doesn’t eat anything exotic, and is similar to anyone around the world. Everyone would rather read an article talking about an Asian who won a prize for being a math genius or an Asian who committed suicide due to excessive pressure from parents. They want those types of stories and the media provides them with these. The audience only remembers those and anything that disproves their prior view of the group, they will forget.

I have seen this ever since I was little. Moving from country to country, I have encountered several people who have misconceptions of a certain group. A prime example of this is when I moved to New York. Many times, when I mentioned to the New Yorkers that I have lived in Bahrain, a Muslim country right next to Saudi Arabia, they would be astonished by the fact that I was even alive. To them (especially after 9/11), Muslims equaled terrorists – cruel, violent, and immoral. Ironically, when I think of one word that described Bahrain, I use the word “peaceful.”

Adichie speaks the truth. If I were to name one thing that seemed to be similar in all seven countries that I lived in, it would be ignorance. You. Me. Them. Us. We all do it and although it’s sad, everyone tends to believe the things that they are exposed to, overgeneralize, and assume that that one side of a story they hear is everything. It was so inspiring how Adichie was able to explain this so well that I even sent this to my former supervisor of the project I mentioned above. Because believe me, trying to explain about other's narrow-mindedness and attempting to make your audience feel in awe is extremely hard. She was simply amazing.