Generalizations and Sterotypes

Just finished watching Chimanda Adichie's TED talk on the danger of a single story. I found her points made both informative and convincing. Adichie tells the story about a "servant boy" in her house when she was younger. Her mother would always tell her to be grateful for what she had, because he had nothing. When she eventually saw the boy's family, she was shocked to find one of his brothers had woven something beautiful. She went on to say how she had gotten so used to the singular perception of the people she had trouble accepting that they were capable of anything creative. She feels that this is the problem with Africa. The west has become so singularly fed information about the continent that they are unable to view the people as individuals. She believes that the way to fix this problem is to not tell the "singular story" and instead have different stories of real people. She gives the example of a student at a university saying that he feels so bad that Nigerian men abuse women (based on a character in her book). To which she responded (loosely) "I just read American Psycho, and it's such a shame American men are serial killers". The point can be summarized with the ironic statement "all generalizations are false", and I agree