Questioning the Singular Story

At risk of sounding like a paranoid conspiracist, my philosophy when it comes to learning is “Question everything.” I question my sources, my sources’ sources, my professors, myself and my own biases. One person’s perspective is never the (capital T) Truth. I always tell my friends when they see something on the news that is important, they should read about it from multiple networks and multiple large and small sources. The closest you can get to the Truth usually lies somewhere between all of them. Obviously you can’t do that with everything all the time, because you wouldn’t have much of a life, but I think it’s important to remind yourself that not everything is as cut and dry as it may seem. Obviously we all have biases that affect how we understand new information or people/groups that are different than us. Even in sciences that seem straight forward, there is bias in how we make sense of test results. I can watch the same exact video clip as a hundred other people, and there will be variation in how we all understand it. There is no getting around that, but I think there are responsible ways to acknowledge bias, whether it be someone else’s or your own, and create more true understandings of human history. 

Evolution is one of those topics that is immensely complex and can be looked at a hundred different ways. It’s something some people don’t even believe in. There’s creationists within different religions around the world, there’s those who believe the one story they’ve heard and never asked any more questions, there’s those who have picked a version they believe and those that haven’t. My two biggest issues when it comes to exploring evolution are that majority of our sources are written through the lenses of white men and that few of them confront the issues of racism, sexism, bigotry, etc that their very investigation is tied to. 

In past classes, I feel like there has been a hesitance to acknowledge that almost everything we read is through a white male lens. I think it is so important to remember that as we read about where we come from and history in general. I know it is also kind of infuriating. The Athreya and Ackerman paper acknowledges that and the western-centric lens as well. The paper also references some of the literature that describes living people and groups in ways to emphasize their “primitiveness and savagery.” So basically white europeans felt entitled enough to explain and define cultures they didn’t understand in terms that made sense to themselves and benefited their narrative… not cool. This is one of many reasons I always say question everything, because it is so easy to be mislead by biased information, whether the author intended to frame things in a certain light or not. Even the ‘sciences’ are not 100% objective. 

Racism, sexism, bigotry… It is all engrained in our history, our political systems, our understanding of the world. The Athreya and Ackerman paper does a great job of pointing out that the original studying of evolution was through a racist system. For those original scientists studying evolution, it was a priority to keep the narrative of Europeans being superior and keeping others on the outside. The concept of “otherization” is so harmful because more than just ignore or downplay minority narratives and experiences, it often involved edits or falsities. This racist and sexist system clearly has had lasting impacts on how the public think about people who look/behave/believe differently than themselves. You can especially see the impact by turning on the news this week. 

I know much of that was a bit pessimistic, but this is the kind of stuff that really makes me angry. I was already angry when I sat down to write this because of the current issues in this country, in Hong Kong, and everywhere else. We are supposed to learn from our history so that we can do better, but when our view of history is flawed and misrepresented to begin with, we end up in the same place. Like Dunsworth, I agree that when we don’t acknowledge the ways evolutionary science inspired racist and sexist beliefs, we are bystanders to their current effects. Worse than that, without evolution educators, we are creating more bystanders. These are issues people shy away from because it feels uncomfortable. But it should be uncomfortable, because it’s real. If we don’t address the Truth (by looking at it from as many perspectives as possible), try understand what it really means and how it affects us, and take educated action to change the present, we can’t learn and do better. Dunsworth says it much better than I could: “One powerful way to facilitate that understanding is by increasing diversity in the fact makers and the storytellers, to demonstrate how different perspectives lead to different questions and different answers, both contributing to new discoveries and different stories. In one fell swoop, then, science is stronger and our origins story is more inclusive.” Unfortunately, whether in the studying of evolution or the streets of America, it seems to be a painstakingly slow process towards change. 

“Ultimately Western paleoanthropologists control whose voices are given authority, and who gets to story the history of humanity” (Athreya and Ackerman, 2018). A single story is always dangerous. There is no one person who could objectively story the history of humanity. Hell, I couldn’t objectively story my own life. We need to embrace the complexities of life’s issues and use collections of stories to educate ourselves and others to what is real. And I agree with Dunsworth, we deserve an evolutionary epic. 

Here is one of my absolute favorite Ted Talk’s by Chimamanda Adichie about the danger of a single story.