misunderstood because of a single story

 Back when Tiktok was banned a lot of Americans moved to the Chinese social media app RedNote. This led to a lot of American and Chinese socialization, and I got to hear a lot of stories about how both the USA and China was mischaracterized. The US had pushed anti-communism propaganda for so long, it was a shock to learn that China was not this miserable government repressed, mean country. At the same time, the Chinese were shocked to hear how expensive our groceries and housing were, and how hard we worked. Limiting ourselves to one perspective can create harmful and untrue understandings of other people. To avoid these limited views we should try to get perspectives from both sides of the story. I think direct communication, like RedNote, does a good job of doing that.

Today in class we read about the single story. I remember I've actually done this lesson in the past before, but going over it again made me think about things I've mostly forgotten about.