Alrichco Bornman 39800415

In this blog I would like to discuss the concept of "othering" by using (TED, 2009) as a reference and relating what I've learned from the video to my personal experience.

From my understanding, othering is when a group depicts another as vastly different from their own and makes assumptions about the other group, which could lead to stigmatization. Adichie used an example of the house boy from her childhood  "So, the year I turned eight, we got a new house boy." (TED, 2009) and that "The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor." (TED, 2009), Ngozi assumed that this boy's family could not make anything "It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something." (TED, 2009).

My experience with othering is that as a child I used to make assumptions about people based on the types of jobs they do, a positive stereotype was that I thought teachers never swear, drink alcohol or smoke, because they were the people that warned us against those things in the first place, this was because I only ever encountered teachers in a school setting, where I was their student, this was my experience with forming assumptions from a single story. A negative stereotype would be that I assumed that all people in uniforms don't like jokes because their jobs require them to be serious all the time.

In conclusion limited information about groups can lead us to make harmful assumptions that could potentially affect the lives of others and bias our interactions with them.

References:
TED. 2009, 7 Oct. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story | TED [YouTube video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg Date of access: 10 Mar. 2024.