Language is a very crucial part of any culture. It is characterized as the means of communication, either spoken or written, by groups of people in a particular community or society and is an integral part of civilization as a whole. Language, in its capacity and longevity, elevated man from being in a primitive state to the level of his potential. With all of this being stated, however, it is incomprehensible to me that people abuse and mishandle the power of language.

There are many diverse cultures that migrate into the United States of America. Diversity can be defined as people coming together from either different nationalities, races, genders, or religions in order to form a community, and a diverse community is one that respects and values the difference in its people. Despite the evident benefits of diversity, some people continue to critique and disregard it. In “The F Word,” the author, Firoozeh Dumas, is an Iranian woman who migrates to California at a young age and begins to document her family stories as an endowment to her children. Duma describes Americans as being incompetent to accept the different cultures that are in the country. Americans attempt to assimilate the foreigners into conforming into the American culture, rather than celebrate their ethnicity and ways of life. Duma argues that Americans were more accepting of other cultures in the past, however, foreigners are now belittled for their unique customs and traditions. In the Ted Talks video “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the speaker, makes the argument that hearing only one story about a person can be detrimental and lead to many misconceptions about their personality and life in general. Adichie was born in Nigeria and exhibits many of the physical features of a “typical” African woman. When she travelled to America to attend and complete college, she was rudely awakened by the stereotypes people associated her with. As she walked into her college dorm, she was greeted by her roommate, who immediately asked Adichie to play some of her “tribal” music after introducing herself. You could imagine the surprise on her roommate’s face then when Adichie revealed to her the Mariah Carey CD she had lying in her suitcase.  Adichie’s roommate even asked whether or not Adichie had access to common household amenities such as a stove and indoor plumbing, both of which she possessed. Society makes assumptions of people purely on their predominant physical features. Rather than first become acquainted with them, society stereotypes them into a group that they believe those people belong in. In my opinion, people should get to know someone first before they wrongly accuse them of being something that they are not. I believe that it is horrendous that with such a useful mechanism that language is, people do not employ it to having conversations with people and make suppositions instead.

Language is a very important part of the world today. It is the way in which society communicates, whether it be spoken or written, by a particular community or society. Language elevated man from being in a primitive state to the level of his potential. However, if society does not utilize it as it is intended, what is the point in having it in the first place?