Sisonke Msimang: If a story moves you, act on it | TED

Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Joanna Pietrulewicz

So earlier this year,

I was informed that I would be doing a TED Talk.

So I was excited, then I panicked,

then I was excited, then I panicked,

and in between the excitement and the panicking,

I started to do my research,

and my research primarily consisted of Googling how to give a great TED Talk.

(Laughter)

And interspersed with that,

I was Googling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

How many of you know who that is?

(Cheers)

So I was Googling her because I always Google her

because I'm just a fan,

but also because she always has important and interesting things to say.

And the combination of those searches

kept leading me to her talk

on the dangers of a single story,

on what happens when we have a solitary lens

through which to understand certain groups of people,

and it is the perfect talk.

It's the talk that I would have given if I had been famous first.

(Laughter)

You know, and you know, like, she's African and I'm African,

and she's a feminist and I'm a feminist,

and she's a storyteller and I'm a storyteller,

so I really felt like it's my talk.

(Laughter)

So I decided that I was going to learn how to code,

and then I was going to hack the internet

and I would take down all the copies of that talk that existed,

and then I would memorize it,

and then I would come here and deliver it as if it was my own speech.

So that plan was going really well, except the coding part,

and then one morning a few months ago,

I woke up

to the news that the wife of a certain presidential candidate

had given a speech that --

(Laughter)

(Applause)

that sounded eerily like a speech given by one of my other faves,

Michelle Obama.

(Cheers)

And so I decided that I should probably write my own TED Talk,

and so that is what I am here to do.

I'm here to talk about my own observations about storytelling.

I want to talk to you about the power of stories, of course,

but I also want to talk about their limitations,

particularly for those of us who are interested in social justice.

So since Adichie gave that talk seven years ago,

there has been a boom in storytelling.

Stories are everywhere,

and if there was a danger in the telling of one tired old tale,

then I think there has got to be lots to celebrate about the flourishing

of so many stories and so many voices.

Stories are the antidote to bias.

In fact, today, if you are middle class and connected via the internet,

you can download stories at the touch of a button

or the swipe of a screen.

You can listen to a podcast

about what it's like to grow up Dalit in Kolkata.

You can hear an indigenous man in Australia

talk about the trials and triumphs of raising his children in dignity

and in pride.

Stories make us fall in love.

They heal rifts and they bridge divides.

Stories can even make it easier for us

to talk about the deaths of people in our societies

who don't matter, because they make us care.

Right?

I'm not so sure,

and I actually work for a place called the Centre for Stories.

And my job is to help to tell stories

that challenge mainstream narratives about what it means to be black

or a Muslim or a refugee or any of those other categories

that we talk about all the time.

But I come to this work

after a long history as a social justice activist,

and so I'm really interested in the ways

that people talk about nonfiction storytelling

as though it's about more than entertainment,

as though it's about being a catalyst for social action.

It's not uncommon to hear people say

that stories make the world a better place.

Increasingly, though, I worry that even the most poignant stories,

particularly the stories about people who no one seems to care about,

can often get in the way of action towards social justice.

Now, this is not because storytellers mean any harm.

Quite the contrary.

Storytellers are often do-gooders like me and, I suspect, yourselves.

And the audiences of storytellers

are often deeply compassionate and empathetic people.

Still, good intentions can have unintended consequences,

and so I want to propose that stories are not as magical as they seem.

So three -- because it's always got to be three --

three reasons why I think

that stories don't necessarily make the world a better place.

Firstly, stories can create an illusion of solidarity.

There is nothing like that feel-good factor you get

from listening to a fantastic story

where you feel like you climbed that mountain, right,

or that you befriended that death row inmate.

But you didn't.

You haven't done anything.

Listening is an important

but insufficient step towards social action.

Secondly, I think often we are drawn

towards characters and protagonists

who are likable and human.

And this makes sense, of course, right?

Because if you like someone, then you care about them.

But the inverse is also true.

If you don't like someone,

then you don't care about them.

And if you don't care about them,

you don't have to see yourself as having a moral obligation

to think about the circumstances that shaped their lives.

I learned this lesson when I was 14 years old.

I learned that actually, you don't have to like someone

to recognize their wisdom,

and you certainly don't have to like someone

to take a stand by their side.

So my bike was stolen

while I was riding it --

(Laughter)

which is possible if you're riding slowly enough, which I was.

(Laughter)

So one minute I'm cutting across this field

in the Nairobi neighborhood where I grew up,

and it's like a very bumpy path,

and so when you're riding a bike,

you don't want to be like, you know --

(Laughter)

And so I'm going like this, slowly pedaling,

and all of a sudden, I'm on the floor.

I'm on the ground, and I look up,

and there's this kid peddling away in the getaway vehicle,

which is my bike,

and he's about 11 or 12 years old, and I'm on the floor,

and I'm crying because I saved a lot of money for that bike,

and I'm crying and I stand up and I start screaming.

Instinct steps in, and I start screaming, "Mwizi, mwizi!"

which means "thief" in Swahili.

And out of the woodworks, all of these people come out

and they start to give chase.

This is Africa, so mob justice in action.

Right?

And I round the corner, and they've captured him,

they've caught him.

The suspect has been apprehended,

and they make him give me my bike back,

and they also make him apologize.

Again, you know, typical African justice, right?

And so they make him say sorry.

And so we stand there facing each other,

and he looks at me, and he says sorry,

but he looks at me with this unbridled fury.

He is very, very angry.

And it is the first time that I have been confronted with someone

who doesn't like me simply because of what I represent.

He looks at me with this look as if to say,

"You, with your shiny skin and your bike, you're angry at me?"

So it was a hard lesson that he didn't like me,

but you know what, he was right.

I was a middle-class kid living in a poor country.

I had a bike, and he barely had food.

Sometimes, it's the messages that we don't want to hear,

the ones that make us want to crawl out of ourselves,

that we need to hear the most.

For every lovable storyteller who steals your heart,

there are hundreds more whose voices are slurred and ragged,

who don't get to stand up on a stage dressed in fine clothes like this.

There are a million angry-boy-on-a-bike stories

and we can't afford to ignore them

simply because we don't like their protagonists

or because that's not the kid that we would bring home with us

from the orphanage.

The third reason that I think

that stories don't necessarily make the world a better place

is that too often we are so invested in the personal narrative

that we forget to look at the bigger picture.

And so we applaud someone

when they tell us about their feelings of shame,

but we don't necessarily link that to oppression.

We nod understandingly when someone says they felt small,

but we don't link that to discrimination.

The most important stories, especially for social justice,

are those that do both,

that are both personal and allow us to explore and understand the political.

But it's not just about the stories we like

versus the stories we choose to ignore.

Increasingly, we are living in a society where there are larger forces at play,

where stories are actually for many people beginning to replace the news.

Yeah?

We live in a time where we are witnessing the decline of facts,

when emotions rule

and analysis, it's kind of boring, right?

Where we value what we feel more than what we actually know.

A recent report by the Pew Center on trends in America

indicates that only 10 percent of young adults under the age of 30

"place a lot of trust in the media."

Now, this is significant.

It means that storytellers are gaining trust

at precisely the same moment

that many in the media are losing the confidence in the public.

This is not a good thing,

because while stories are important

and they help us to have insights in many ways,

we need the media.

From my years as a social justice activist,

I know very well that we need credible facts from media institutions

combined with the powerful voices of storytellers.

That's what pushes the needle forward in terms of social justice.

In the final analysis, of course,

it is justice

that makes the world a better place,

not stories. Right?

And so if it is justice that we are after,

then I think we mustn't focus on the media or on storytellers.

We must focus on audiences,

on anyone who has ever turned on a radio

or listened to a podcast,

and that means all of us.

So a few concluding thoughts

on what audiences can do to make the world a better place.

So firstly, the world would be a better place, I think,

if audiences were more curious and more skeptical

and asked more questions about the social context

that created those stories that they love so much.

Secondly, the world would be a better place

if audiences recognized that storytelling is intellectual work.

And I think it would be important for audiences

to demand more buttons on their favorite websites,

buttons for example that say,

"If you liked this story,

click here to support a cause your storyteller believes in."

Or "click here to contribute to your storyteller's next big idea."

Often, we are committed to the platforms,

but not necessarily to the storytellers themselves.

And then lastly, I think that audiences can make the world a better place

by switching off their phones,

by stepping away from their screens

and stepping out into the real world beyond what feels safe.

Alice Walker has said,

"Look closely at the present you are constructing.

It should look like the future you are dreaming."

Storytellers can help us to dream,

but it's up to all of us to have a plan for justice.

Thank you.

(Applause)