Although, in recent years there have been several advances in critical applied linguistics which have attempted to problematize the ideological underpinnings of language practices, there have in parallel been resistances mounted on the part of traditional applied linguistics that adamantly oppose any form of coming to terms with the political and ideological nature of the discipline. The native speaker and its putative native-speakerism ideology are an exemplary site where the different applied linguistics epistemologies and vested disciplinary interests are contested. In an article published in a recent issue of "System", Waters (Waters, A., 2007. Native-speakerism in EL: plus ca change...? System 35, 281-292) argued that native-speakerism critique suffers from serious epistemological and methodological flaws in that it, the argument runs, adopts an under-developed concept of stereotyping and fails to provide empirical evidence in support of the claims it advances. I would argue in this paper that Waters' (i) position is indicative of the conservatism of applied linguistics to come to terms with its condition of possibility and the deeply ideological and political nature of its practices and (ii) psychologization of stereotyping and a historical account of native-speakerism misrepresent the fundamental nature of social reality and applied linguistics practices, and consequently deflect attention from and reproduce the structures of power and inequality that they embody and uphold.