The Coming of John

The danger of a single story is that you don’t fully know about that person,
place, or thing. A single story makes you make a judgment based on only
one story. It makes those people become that story. Nkali is the power of
who tells the story, when the story is told, how they are told, and how many
times they are told. This can be dangerous because stories can get twisted.
The problem with stereotypes isn’t that they are untrue, it's that they are
incomplete. One important idea that I’ll remember from this talk is to never

have an opinion on someone based on a single story.

John Jones has to work very hard to get what he wants in this story and is still pushed

away from teaching in the “negro school”. The judge's son John was

pretty much worshipped by the entire town because he was white and named john.

I think that DuBois chose the fictional route so he can add more background to the

story. When Jones went to college he started to notice the oppression and differences

between his world and the white world. I think that education beyond a future career

can change a person. Some people can gain a whole different view of life just from one

class. The town has its own stereotype of John Jones and the judge's son John which is

something that Chimamanda talked about in her Ted Talk.

Jim Crow laws were made to segregate, discriminate and intimidate the African

American people. Most of them were sharecroppers after being freed. The Civil Rights

Act of 1875 was supposed to make sure they were treated equally in public but there

were revisions to the act. So during the era of “change”, some could say that it was just

as bad as before.