Day 9 – Your feelings on ageism

Day 9 – Your feelings on ageism

Although the term ageism is not used nearly as often as similar stereotyping forms of discrimination such as sexism or racism, that does not mean that it is any less prevalent. Rather, I believe that the lack of serious conversation about it is more an indicator of how prevalent it is. And although the term could technically be used to discuss stereotyping toward any age group, in practice it nearly always is used to refer to prejudice toward “older people”.

As an example, if you were to ask a question of a younger person, say about some aspect of US History, and they didn’t know the answer, then you would probably say the issue was with their lack of exposure to the subject and blame our education system rather than blame the individual. But if you were to ask the same question of an older person, then you would chalk it up to a “senior moment” (if you were being polite or perhaps you were an older person yourself), or to “early onset dementia” if you were less polite.

As one who has recently become a member of the “older generation” since I have now passed the typical retirement age, I have an increasingly smaller amount of hair and what I have is nearly all white, I have also become increasingly aware of ageism. It doesn’t matter that I can still run circles around most people mentally (a trait that I have been blessed with), and that I am very widely read, I sense that those in the younger generation just classify me as one of those “older people” and they no longer look to me for advice as I’m presumed to either not have a knowledge of current issues.

Unfortunately, as long as we don’t talk about it in the same way that we do about racism, we just promote ageism because we are presuming that it’s true and we’ll never have any good solutions to it.

As one who deals quite frequently with various cultural stereotypes and generalizations in my work with exchange students, this is just another of the stereotypes that we should include in discussions of cultural issues. But it’s one that flies under the radar most of the time.