Will Age Friendliness Replace DEI?

As a white male of fairly average body size and shape, I've been immune to the lifelong discrimination often faced by women, people of color, plus-sizers, and others marginalized by their physical appearance. Upon entering my 60s, however, I began to confront ageist thinking and practices, a result no doubt of my appearance and the graduation dates on my resume which went back to the 1970s. Being invited to join AARP at age 50 was a bit of a shock, but now I was being asked if I needed help getting groceries to my car and, I feared, instantly dismissed as a job candidate by an AI robot because of my age.

Given my previous privileged status, this was a rather surprising and disturbing development. “Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man,” mused Leon Trotsky, a sentiment that the Marxist revolutionary and I (oddly) share. Like hundreds of others of anti-ageism activists, I’ve done what I could (in my case write books and blog) to try to persuade others to not use an individual’s age as a reliable measure of judging her or his worth as a human being. The greater goal is to change people’s (mis)perceptions about aging in the pursuit of equality for all.

While I don’t like it a bit, I can understand how, in our youth-dominant society, the physical signs of older age—grey hair and wrinkles, notably—or birth dates are (mistakenly) equated with decline and irrelevance. A host of myths and stereotypes—e.g., that older people can’t learn new things and are just shadows of the active people they used to be—are wrapped up in our deeply rooted ageism, which some argue is the most tolerated form of discrimination.

Because it is culturally based and built on generations of outdated thinking, ageism admittedly represents a mighty challenge to defeat. Still, it’s worth the effort, as millions of people in this country and around the world suffer in some way directly because of the biases attached to it.

The irony of ageism is that the third act of life is actually mostly about the pursuit of wisdom, self-actualization, and leaving some kind of legacy. The distressing changes to one’s body that come with aging are often countered by an evolution of mind and spirit. One’s older years are typically a period of intellectual growth, accelerated creativity, emotional contentment, and a desire to take on new challenges.

Happily, the attributes that naturally come with age—experience, perspective, and judgement, notably—have recently gained considerable value and social currency, as it is these qualities that prove most useful in making decisions and solving problems. Older adults are thus in an ideal position to make valuable contributions to society and, at the same, find personal contentment and a sense of well-being.

Now that the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement appears to be on the wane—in large part due to President Trump’s reelection—can what I call the “Age Friendly” movement gain real traction? Despite the concerted efforts of the anti-ageism community, attempts to reverse the social and economic discrimination directed at older people have been remarkably unsuccessful. This is due to a number of powerful forces in play: that older people are often perceived as having lost certain physical and mental abilities; that beauty in the United States has long been heavily defined by youth; that baby boomers as a demographic cohort are disliked if not outright despised by many members of younger generations; and the effect of “gerontophobia,” i.e., the unreasonable fear and/or hatred of older people because advanced age is associated with death.

The large vacuum in social activism created by a seemingly weaker DEI initiative may present an ideal opportunity to address the major global problem of ageism, however. Happily, history tells us that this is entirely possible.

Since the late 19th century, social activism movements in the United States have tended to come in waves, beginning with the Progressive-era social reforms resulting from Jacob Riis’s 1890 expose on “how the other half” (urban poor) lived. Women’s suffrage came next, followed by the decades-long African American civil rights movement, the feminist and gay rights movements, and multiculturalism, which ultimately evolved into DEI.

Given that aging is something that happens to everyone—making it perhaps the ultimate inclusive experience—there is legitimate reason to believe that ageism can finally be tossed into the dustbin of history.