The Danger Of A Single Story
I come from a very unique community at home. This community determined where I grew up, who my friends were, and how I did things. The community I come from are Northern Virginia Asian-Americans. Now, those who do not come from this world probably have no idea what I am talking about, but it is a very real and very big community that exists in NOVA.
Asian-Americans themselves are a group of people who experience the danger of a single story to this day. Although now we are being more exposed in popular culture and slowly understood that we are all different and unique, Asian-Americans are generally believed to be smart, perfectionists, conservative and sometimes nerdy. However, my community of Asian-Americans are not only defined by these things. Now for the people who do not know what the community of NOVA Asian-Americans is or have never been exposed to it, the difference between Asian-Americans in general and NOVA Asian-Americans can get very confusing. Thus, I will try to explain it thoroughly to the best of my abilities.
Just as there are differences between Northern California and Southern Californian Asian-Americans, Northern Virginian Asian-Americans are a story of their own. NOVA Asian-Americans is a group of over 10,000 Asian-Americans who live in the Northern Virginia area but mainly in Centreville, Virginia. All 10,00 of these people are connected through different churches, schools, people, and church events. There are specific traditions and cultures that exist in this community and mostly everyone in this community have heard of or met everyone else at one point in their life, either through mutual friends or through church events. NOVA Asian-Americans are mostly Christian and majority are korean, because they connect through big korean churches in the NOVA area. Now, due to all of these, NOVA Asian-Americans have earned a reputation for themselves that do not follow the typical Asian-American stereotypes. We are generally thought to be tryhards, gossipers, hypocritical, sporty, and catty. Now, it does not mean that we dodge the typical stereotypes of being Asian, we just have additional stereotypes put onto us.
These negative connotations have somehow found their way to become our labels because although NOVA Asian-Americans in itself is a big group of people, there are little groups inside of this community. Most of the time it is determined by what church you go to but most people who belong to a “group” are stuck in it. The existence of these groups can often create a lot of drama between different groups, usually based on bad experiences with each other. Due to this, I have met many people who refuse to be friends or acquainted with anyone who identifies with this community. I have also met people who claim to hate all Asian-Americans from NOVA because they are all fake or are too cliquey for their taste. The sad thing is that I cannot deny some of these claims. Even I, as an individual who identifies with this group, can say that they are all of these things at times. I have had my fair share of horror stories in this community and wished not to associate with anyone in this group. However, I also found love and deep friendships in this community. These are the people that i grew up with and will continue to live with. Its where I feel the most comfortable and the only group of people that I could ever truly call mine.
Every group of people have their problems, as much as they may hate to deny it. However, when we let a single story of the bad things or a single negative stereotype base what we believe of every person from that community, we run into the danger of a single story. People who do not belong to this community will only hear about all the drama that circulates in it and choose to judge people based on that. However, there are so many different stories and so many different people who are not the typical story. Not everyone in the community will be like the stories that you hear or follow the stereotypes of what you believe people in that community are like.
Once we allow ourselves to only listen to one story, we fall into the danger of making a group of people one thing, and one thing only. Once that is done, we don’t stop to think about the people who may not be like that. We are too far gone in our hatred or disapproval of these people that we stop searching for the truth. That is the true danger of a single story.
