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The idea that the elimination of stigma is a necessary condition for major progress for African Americans and others is often hinted at in arguments for restrictions on hate speech. For example, Richard Delgado takes the following view:
Not only does racist speech, by placing all the credibility with the dominant group, strengthen the dominant story, it also works to disempower minority groups by crippling the effectiveness of their speech in rebuttal. This situation makes free speech a powerful asset to the dominant group, but a much less helpful one to subordinate groups - a result at odds, certainly, with market-theories of the First Amendment. Unless society is able to deal with this incongruity, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and our complex system of civil rights statutes will be of little avail. At best, they will be able to obtain redress for episodic, blatant acts of individual prejudice and bigotry. This redress will do little to address the source of the problem: the speech that creates the stigma-picture that makes the acts hurtful in the first place, and that renders almost any other form of aid - social or legal - useless.

It is important to realize that this statement includes at least two claims about the way a complicated causal nexus works in society. First, it claims that stigma is constructed by hate speech. Second, it claims that stigma has a certain primacy with regard to progressive change. Without eliminating stigma, other progress is impossible. It is crucial that we think about how the methods of sociology can be used to confirm or refute these claims.

Reference: Richard Delgado, "Campus Antiracism Rules: Constitutional Narratives in Collision," in Striking a Balance, ed. Sandra Coliver, p. 293.