How in the Hell are They Supposed to Talk to Us?: How Hegemony Starts the Fire and Blames Other People

When it comes to social justice there is an important term that doesn't come up enough. Hegemony is the social, cultural, ideological, and economic dominance of one group of people over another. But dominance is only part of the picture. Hegemony works because society/culture has made one group dominant and the same group has stayed in power long enough that the subordinated group doesn't see that they are subordinated, or they believe that it is right that they are subordinate.

The trick is that both groups believe that the system is natural or "of God." I have seen this play out many ways--colonization of indigenous people, women, race relations, etc. Hegemonic structures crack when the non-dominant group begins to see their own oppression, but by that time, systems are usually so entrenched that they are hard to break. Hegemony gets in the way of the marginalized group's ability to have a vision for themselves and the dominant group's understanding of equity.

There are several things that I see come into play because of how hegemony and rhetoric work together. One of the ways is how those in power use emotion as a weapon. When those in power show anger they are said to be powerful. When women, people of color, etc get angry they are called emotional. Anger is a natural human emotion and it is weaponized against people who are marginalized.

All of this is to say that right now--this very day--our hegemonic systems are more obvious, and the world is on fire. White people keep talking about keeping the peace or are angry that black people are protesting at all. It seems like we don’t remember Collin Kaepernick, who tried to kneel as a protest. If we are mad that people kneel and we are equally mad that they protest, then how in the hell are they supposed to talk to us? The problem is that if we look closely our society doesn’t like black people. Our society believes black people shouldn’t have a voice. We show this disdain by maintaining the status quo and calling for “civility.”

Friends, you did not listen when Kaepernick was civil. You hated him. If you didn’t listen then, don’t pretend like you would listen if destruction wasn't imminent. You have shown your cards and they are not pretty. 

As a white gal one of the first articles I read about race and hegemony was Rhetoric of Confrontation (1969) by Scott and Smith who summarize why confrontation rhetoric is necessary. Confrontation rhetoric works against structures that use decorum to maintain racist structures. According to this article, rhetoric should use any form (embodied, visual, oral) that helps people see why those in power aren’t the end-all of goodness. They begin with the idea that “confrontation crackles menacingly from every issue in our country” and “reflects a dramatic sense of division” (p. 2). We are at a moment when the division is real, embodied, and essential. White bodies must be involved to protect black bodies while they speak their truth to power. Amplify as many black voices as you can.

Scott and Smith outline the easiest and most basic division is the “haves” and the “have nots” and that the “have nots” see themselves radically separated from the structures that hold them down. Scott and Smith complicate their ideas by using Manichean ideology to show how those in power see themselves as deserving of the goodness of society because they are good. Simplified, let’s just say that many people who currently hold power believe they are there because they have done good things and deserve to be there. This ideology allows those in power to overlook the systems and people that put them into that power.

Through this lens, those in power see themselves as good and they struggle with evil and the vessels of evil. To confront the “have nots” those leaders “work benignly and energetically to transform the others into worthy copies of themselves” (p. 3), because they only see those who are like them as worthy. Did you catch that? Those who have a voice try to transform people into copies. This goal of integration builds and preserves invisible structures of racism. Because the system of power is set up through the lens of good and evil with those in power as the good, those who “have not” are forced to agree and change in order to hope for food, land, power, choice, and survival.

Because the system is rooted in the belief that those in power are already right, Scott and Smith point out that “the process of supplanting will be violent for it is born of a violent system” (p. 4). To be sure, if one group of humans is kept from having the basic needs of food and freedom, the system is already violent. Changing a violent system will always be violent because there is no other choice. The system is set up so that decorum and civility are used by the establishment as a way to “benefit by such respect and to have their views established as true until proven false” (p. 5). That doesn’t mean that people will have to die, but killing entrenched ideas is also a violent process.

Trevor Noah says it all best in this clip (which is really worth all 18 minutes) posted above: http://abitofsisterlyadvice.blogspot.com/2020/05/george-floyd-minneapolis-protests.html

Scott and Smith also point out that if there is nowhere to go but up then there is nothing to lose and it is only through confronting the systems of power with strong rhetoric and action that anything can or will change.

Scott and Smith call for “a rhetorical theory suitable to our age [that takes into account] the charge that civility and decorum serve as masks for the preservation of injustice, that condemns the dispossessed to non-being” (p. 8). These confrontations have to be strong enough to unmask the myths build by our hegemony, and make the establishment show how ugly they really are. This radical understanding of confrontation is necessary to act wisely and teach rhetoric is a way that is useful for social understanding and movement.