Appropriateness-based models of language learning and teaching are rooted in a pervasive neocolonial agenda informed by Eurocentric epistemologies of "standard" or "academic" language (Flores & Rosa, 2015). In examining the normalized limitations of a language program through a raciolinguistic lens, we can better comprehend how program design is fostered by the structure of language departments themselves. Language departments have a high percentage of tenured/tenure-track faculty specialized in Literary or Cultural Studies, and few experts in language, i.e., Applied Linguists; thus, critical language pedagogy is usually divorced from department research. Accordingly, language departments do little to acknowledge and rectify how their design is based on a hegemonic model of language. In this paper, I will briefly describe the role of standardized language in the maintenance of the status quo in language programs and departments. Thereafter, I will provide some concrete steps to begin the process of decolonizing language programs and denaturalizing "academic" language.