TED TALK Reflection

In general, it is hard to not take interest in a TED Talk.  All of them are incredibly informative.  However I found this TED Talk particularly interesting.  Not because of any new things that I learned (of which there were many) but because of how obvious and right everything that Chimamanda Adiche said was.  Unlike other speakers who fight a battle against stereotyping, Adiche doesn't deny where our views come from.  What she does do, which truly just 'strikes a chord' in how perfectly accurate it is, is acknowledge that while stereotypes are rooted in truth, there is always more to the story.  When Adiche talks about her trip to Mexico, she admits how easily she fell into the single-story trap that America lays when it comes to Mexicans and Mexican immigrants, and how inaccurate a view one can gain from a single viewpoint.  I know that I laughed with Adiche when she brought up how surprised her roommate was that she didn't know tribal african music and was more interested in Mariah Carey and Jay-Z.  But looking back - I would likely have made the same mistake.  After hearing Adiche speak, it seems so obvious how skewed and perverted our viewpoints are of places that we know only from our societies own biased view on those places.  Initially, I was very disappointed in myself for not fully realizing this earlier, as I have been lucky enough to travel to many different places, including sub-saharan africa.  But like Adiche said, when I went there, my focus wasn't on how similar they were to me and the society I am used to, but how different.  I never thought about what kinds of music people there liked to listen to - what interests we may have had in common. While I did talk to and get to know some of the people there, and see some similarities, with the 'single story' I had been fed for my entire life about what Africa was like, I was far more focused on the differences of the people there and the similarities to to the story than the uniqueness of each individual person and their situation.
Magnifying my disappointment in myself is the fact that I'm jewish.  And the fact that there have been many times when I have traveled where people don't realize until I tell them or they see my last name.  I don't wear a yamacha, and I (tend to) shave my beard.  I'm definetly not scrawny and nerdy.  I don't fit that 'single story'