because otherwise, all that happens is the government says, "Okay, you're right, now we'll punish people for being mean to you," and then people think, "Okay, it's all taken care of. We don't have to worry about discrimination now because we have laws against that." But it's still there, and it only becomes more hidden and harder to bring out in the open and deal with, so long, especially, as race is correlated with socioeconomic class/the means to real power and influence.
They say language is the only place left where it's politically correct to discriminate--because then it's not that "you're not white/stereotypically American enough", it's that "you don't speak Standard." People get denied jobs because they don't speak Standard, even though it's clear that English-speakers can understand them. They don't present a good "image", therefore they don't sell, so the businesses don't take responsibility--they say it's just a business decision. And I suppose that's true. The audience doesn't want to see their newscaster "talking black" either. Because all that says is "black" (which, here, is clearly a stereotype for lower class, which is shown whenever a black person "talks proper" and is therefore tolerated, because you don't talk that way without education/money), whereas the other says "unmarked objective news."
And I swear to god, you don't need hate speech and violence to keep a group down, all you need is to exclude them from equal opportunities, exclude them from everything the dominant group has, just tolerate them, by keeping them as the marked group, where everything they do is tainted with their status, where they don't have the freedom to be taken as equally rational and equally objective, while the middle class white people get to be unmarked, get to be the voice of everyone, the generic human, and things will stay more or less the same. That unmarked, that one group being the voice of everyone, is what hegemony is. And identifying yourself as what it already draws itself in contrast to (any marked group), plays into the way it creates its power. It will tolerate those marked groups the whole time it oppresses them.
I should probably be clear from this that I think there are a number of things that can, that have to, change for this to improve. One is related to class, and that's the hardest one. Actually, no, the hardest one might be the part that's related to nation-states.
no subject
They say language is the only place left where it's politically correct to discriminate--because then it's not that "you're not white/stereotypically American enough", it's that "you don't speak Standard." People get denied jobs because they don't speak Standard, even though it's clear that English-speakers can understand them. They don't present a good "image", therefore they don't sell, so the businesses don't take responsibility--they say it's just a business decision. And I suppose that's true. The audience doesn't want to see their newscaster "talking black" either. Because all that says is "black" (which, here, is clearly a stereotype for lower class, which is shown whenever a black person "talks proper" and is therefore tolerated, because you don't talk that way without education/money), whereas the other says "unmarked objective news."
And I swear to god, you don't need hate speech and violence to keep a group down, all you need is to exclude them from equal opportunities, exclude them from everything the dominant group has, just tolerate them, by keeping them as the marked group, where everything they do is tainted with their status, where they don't have the freedom to be taken as equally rational and equally objective, while the middle class white people get to be unmarked, get to be the voice of everyone, the generic human, and things will stay more or less the same. That unmarked, that one group being the voice of everyone, is what hegemony is. And identifying yourself as what it already draws itself in contrast to (any marked group), plays into the way it creates its power. It will tolerate those marked groups the whole time it oppresses them.
I should probably be clear from this that I think there are a number of things that can, that have to, change for this to improve. One is related to class, and that's the hardest one. Actually, no, the hardest one might be the part that's related to nation-states.