I grew up in small town Saskatchewan – Indian Head – which is primarily dominated by white, middle-class families. We only have two schools, a Pre-K-6 elementary school and a 7-12 high school. When I attended these schools, the way things were taught were pretty traditional – sit in a desk, in a row, listen to the teacher talk, work when told to work. On top of that, whenever we read articles, stories or novels for any of our classes, they were all very similar in nature (with some exceptions, particularly much later in my schooling) in terms of the stories they presented – they were from the perspective of a white, middle-class person, who went about their white, middle-class life, and perhaps some inconvenience happens at some point which ruins their day. I remember the general message and formation of these types of stories, but not the actual content of these stories – we read so many of them and they were all so similar that they all blend together, and are all fairly unremarkable. Despite me thinking that now, these stories are what has shaped my views on what is normal – or my ‘single stories’.
Outside of school, my family is very supportive of my education and hobbies, and I was privileged with the ability to be able to do a lot of the things I wanted to do growing up – within the realm of financial and realistic probability. With distant relatives however, there are quite a few people who have a less than ideal outlook on those they deem as ‘others’. Because of these relatives, throughout most of my childhood, I held onto some pretty problematic ‘single stories’ about different races and cultures that are fairly prominent in our society (even in white-dominated Indian Head) that I struggled with, particularly when I would meet somebody who would fall under a category that I had a ‘single story’ about. If they did not meet the criteria of my ‘single story’, I struggled with that. Is my entire world view wrong? Or are they an exception? At the time, I never considered that perhaps it was just those ‘single stories’ that were wrong, and that holding people to a ‘single story’ is unfair to them and doing a disservice to yourself. Holding on to my ‘single stories’ is something that I still struggle with, but it is something I recognize is extremely problematic and I am consistently working to rid myself of judging people on (usually incorrect) preconceived notions and ‘single stories’.