Oppressing Silence: The Domination of Hegemony

Hegemony is oppression in a less visible form. Based off of the dominant ideology becoming normalized, hegemony inherently extra-normalizes thoughts that lie outside of its sphere of standard. Dominant ideology suppresses dissenting points of view; suppression is why we need interruption and that is why groups like Black Lives Matter are important. Without questioning the hegemony, without breaking it up, there can be no true diversity. Hegemony is silent oppression that allows white people to believe that they are not complicit in institutionalized racism.

In the U.S. today, it is possible to be a white man toting guns spouting off about race war or “blood and soil,” yet still have all of your rights defended and protected, but if a single black person says that police are overly violent against black people, they are denounced as violent thugs. This difference in "free speech" is caused by dominant ideology. The idea of white purity has been normalized by our society, but so has the idea of black violence. Such a hegemonic existence effectively robs anyone outside of the dominant ideology of their voice and agency. By extra-normalizing points of view, it becomes possible to oppress people mentally as well as physically. Oppression hides behind thought and normalization as well as law.

Going back to the beginning of race thinking, whiteness was considered to be purity and blackness was evil, a trend which continues to this day through different incarnations. Up to the late 19th century, slavery kept black voices from interrupting society and for 100 years after that, segregation allowed the oppression and outright murder of black people to continue. Despite the extralegal status of those actions, slavery and lynchings were allowed to happen because they were part of the dominant ideology. Even today, despite the fact that dominant ideology now suppresses such racial violence by civilians, it condones oppression through violence under different “legal” pretenses. Police brutality is the weapon that hegemony made to suppress black voices.

  Voices of oppressed ideologies must be louder in an effort to break up hegemony. Black Lives Matter attempts to do such, to interrupt the silent oppression of black people that is perpetuated through normality. Police brutality itself is partly a product of the hegemony in our society. America has devalued black life for centuries and to say that black life is no longer devalued is absurd. The view that black lives matter less has become so normalized into our society, our way of thinking, that we can no longer see it without a group to point it out to us. Without breaking up this hegemony, there is no equality because the devaluation of black lives and bodies is a long since normalized idea within American society. 
          To not decry and shout about the injustice perpetuated by “business as usual” is to be complicit in the hegemony and oppression of voices that are not part of the dominant ideology. There is no gray area to this issue. Groups like Black Lives Matter bring the interruption that is necessary to chip away at the domination of hegemony. Oppression has always been based in thought and hegemony because labeling someone as “other” is the most effective way to devalue their argument. America's history is hegemonic oppression of and violence against non-white people. The most vulnerable voices in society are by far the most important because they are the ones being silently oppressed by “normal views.” 

WC: 578
Pledged: Phillips Hutchison