Stereotypes

Hey Hannah here,
Everyone (okay maybe not everyone) that watches medical dramas has heard of the famed House M.D. They also know that it is no longer showing on Netflix or practically anywhere else but it has been replaced it (on DSTV) with "The Good Doctor". The new series is mainly about Shaun who is an Autistic (meaning he has autism) intern. His autism meant that he was insanely smart but lacked non verbal communication skills.
I watched an episode where they had a female muslim patient who came in with a burn. She said that she had the accident from cooking but Shaun noted that her symptoms did not match her words and so came up with the conclusion that she was lying and she got the burn from a chemical used in the production of nuclear bombs (he was right but the chemical is also used to purify water) and that she was a terrorist (he was wrong). In the end it was found out that she used it to make perfume and had lied to protect her brother who was supplying her with the chemicals from his work at a water purification site. He had jumped to a conclusion without full proof. They weren't doing anything illegal.
The episode reminded me of a Ted Talk video I had watched called "the danger of a single story" by Chimamanda Adichie. She said when a person has only story, one view, of a people it can create harmful stereotypes. The news features multiple stories on muslim terrorist attacks and that is the only thing we see of muslims so we tend to assume that muslims are terrorists and this stereotype really hurts people. In the episode the girl got really emotional when Shaun accused her, she described how it felt to have people cancel their flights when they found out that a muslim was on board, how people had already judged her once she entered a room and how she had been stigmatized all her life when she had doned nothing wrong.
Stereotypes harm, they distort our realities and although I am no a muslim I fully agree that single stories, stereotypes hurt others. Many people don"t wait to get to know a person before judging them for things they didn't do or things they cant control because they only have one view, they are closed minded and judge without a second thought. There are many other stereotypes that are hurting people and destroyng lives. Let's be more open minded and save people's lives.
I'm Hannah Kay and I'm just a teenager sharing the wirld the way she views it.

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The Little Things

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