Teaching standardized languages helps to reduce discrimination. Discrimination against African Americans (in general) is rare now, but discrimination against people who speak Ebonics is high. So is discrimination against people who sound Hispanic, and to a lessor extent many regional accents.
If SWE is taught well, it helps people from poor neighborhoods get taken more seriously. If it wasn't taught, only people from richer neighborhoods would know it, and would be used by rich people to exclude upstarts.
That said, using SWE to discriminate is a bad thing. It's just a little less unfair than discriminating based on the fluency of a dialect that poor kids never had a chance to learn.
I agree with all you're saying here, but I just want to point out that it doesn't attack the source of the problem.
A 19 year old Russian male who wasn't taught English properly will need A LOT of effort to learn proper SWE. For some people, it will simply not be feasible. Ability to learn human languages - as opposed to computer languages, much easier to an introvert/math person - is a very distinct ability and you'd be surprised how little correlation it has to intelligence and other skills.
Help reducing discrimination by teaching SWE is akin to help fight discrimination against other races by cosmetics and plastic surgery. Sure, it works on an individual level, but it doesn't help the people who truly have a problem: the ones discriminating.
You're right - it's a band-aid (or maybe a bandage, given that it can be effective) - it's fixing a problem that shouldn't be there. But if it allows some well-spoken members of minorities (i.e. Obama) to fly under the radar, succeed, and set a good example; so it does help fight discrimination.
If SWE is taught well, it helps people from poor neighborhoods get taken more seriously. If it wasn't taught, only people from richer neighborhoods would know it, and would be used by rich people to exclude upstarts.
That said, using SWE to discriminate is a bad thing. It's just a little less unfair than discriminating based on the fluency of a dialect that poor kids never had a chance to learn.