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(JUST NEED TO RESPONED TO THIS POST)

Growing up I was told and revealed to a lot of stories. Most of them came from the shows I watched, social media, what I told from my parents, and even told by strangers or people I barely knew. As a child, these stories influenced me greatly. The way i saw the world when I was younger is completely different as to how I see it now.  Media, tv, and movies are some of the things that influenced me the most. Growing up I loved movies and one of my favorites was ‘Enter the Dragon’ with Bruce Lee.

After watching that movie for the one hundredth time my perspective of all people who could resemble to be Chinese had those skills. That was the only way I saw it and no other way. Every person I saw or interacted with I felt they were honestly fighting machines. The movies also had me portray the Chinese as people who didn’t care for or have much of the materialistic things that I had growing up. Just their art and creativeness just made this picture in my head and imagination that that’s all it ever was. Of course to me at the time it was as if we had two complete different backgrounds.

Also, movies like ‘Rush Hour’ and “Romero Must Die’ didn’t help my biased viewpoints at all either. Viewpoints that focus on culture as a system of symbols tend to emphasize those social institutions such as religion, art,  and education in which communication, symbolism and ideology are more central and the nonmaterial products, or nonmaterial culture, of human life such as beliefs and values (Geertz, 1973).  As I got older and actually made friends with people from a different culture, I quickly learned to not to believe everything i see on tv and in the media. Chimamanda Adichie stated that the media coverage only talks about one story and it eventually becomes the only story. It ultimately robs people of dignity and only shows how people are different rather than similar.

The only way I feel we all can broaden our understanding of others is listening to multiple and diverse stories. Staying open-minded and wanting to learn about the many different backgrounds of others and the people we interact with on a daily.

Adichie, C. N. (2009, July). TEDGlobal. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story

Crapo, R. H. (2013). Cultural Anthropology. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUANT101.13.2/sections/