In my previous post, I briefly mentioned ideology and that having a select group of people deciding what gets produced is not good for society as a whole. I wanted to discuss ideology a little further and how it gets integrated into popular culture. First, ideology is a set of beliefs and values a person, group of people, or society holds in how the world works or should work. In many instances, ideology oppresses particular groups of people, yet those being oppressed will go along with the dominant ideology. Hegemony is the explanation for why this happens. The dominant systems of oppression are perceived as normal, natural, inevitable, unchangeable, the way things are, and how things always will be. Hegemony naturalizes ideology & renders it common sense. So how does this happen?
There are things called Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) that help create and reinforce hegemony, such as Education, family, religion, the legal system, political parties, culture, and communication (particularly the media). They work collectively in reproducing our submission to ideologies by deeming them natural, normal and neutral. However, neutrality is just a myth in many of these cases. In education, there is a cultural bias in standardized tests—they believe that every child should be able to perform the same if they have had the same education, regardless of personal circumstances. The legal system deems that only certain acts are criminalized and able to be convicted. For example, crack cocaine has a harsher punishment than powder cocaine does. There isn’t a good explanation for why there is a disparity, though many believe that crack cocaine is more popular among ethnic groups, particularly African Americans, while powder cocaine is more popular among white people. This is just one disparity among other in the legal system. The media is an ISA because it only shows and represents certain ideologies. Someone gets to decide which story (or part of a story) is most important to tell without giving an alternative to the same story, or a different story that may be coinciding at the same time. Our political parties are also ISAs; currently, our country is dominated by Republicans and Democrats. While we have other parties, they are not given equal airtime, so we often are stuck with the same types of candidates and are forced to choose one of them even if we don’t like either of them because we are not given information about the other candidates.
While it is important to know how oppression happens, it’s even more important to note who is oppressed and how it is manifesting in society. The main groups that we look at in society are gender, race, and class. When hegemony is in play, this leads to sexism, racism, and classism. In America, the hegemonic views are representative of a patriarchal, “white supremacist” and capitalistic society. If you are not a white male who is making a lot of money, you are often times oppressed and do not get as big of a say as you should. Even though we have women who are working and making money for their families and ethnic groups have become more prominent in leadership roles, we still see in our media and daily interactions that they are not taken as seriously as a white, successful male is. Throughout the course of my blog, we will be taking a look at each of these types of oppressions, as well as some forms of media that they take place in a little more closely. Having an understanding of the oppression that happens on a daily basis will help you to open your mind to new ideas and realize that “natural” isn’t really that natural at all, and that anything can change.
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