The Silence of Ageism in Progressive Movements

By Bill Fletcher Jr., teleSUR

05 January 16

Age discrimination is certainly nothing that social justice activists had to worry about in liberal and progressive sectors, right?

ost people I know who have encountered age discrimination are completely unprepared for its reality.

We who have faced the Gorgon never expected that it would challenge us. Age discrimination was always something that affected ‘old’ people. It was something that took place in major corporations that wanted to cut costs. But it was certainly nothing that social justice activists had to worry about in liberal and progressive sectors, right?

In much of the progressive social sector there has been what can only be called a de-commissioning of older activists. And, to be clear, by “older”—and I don’t want to scare you—I mean people over the age of 45 – 50.

This ‘de-commissioning’ is very personal. Suddenly jobs are not available. Compliments may flow about one’s work, but jobs do not. Those who have been ‘de-commissioned’ ask themselves the same question: “is there something that I did?” Rarely is there an assumption that, oh my God, this could be about age discrimination.

To accept that at least a significant part of the de-commissioning is outright age discrimination, one must appreciate that one is aging. This is very difficult for many of us because we desperately wish to believe that we are still young. We may not be senior citizens (though there are many of us who are), and we may be younger than 90, but, let’s face it, we are no longer young.

To accept that the de-commissioning is age discrimination one must also come to terms with the reality that it is not something restricted to the antics of corporate America. Age discrimination permeates capitalist society with the basic notion that workers are all disposable; are all replaceable. Even when working in progressive sectors of society, one encounters the wrath of age discrimination.

When it hits we search for any number of ‘reasonable’ explanations as to why we did not get a job; why we did not get a promotion; why we did not get some nod of recognition. We, then, turn inward, frequently engaging in self-blame.

There are two implications of age discrimination that recur: (1) loss of self-confidence, (2) holding onto a job at all costs. The loss of self-confidence does not come all at once. The response to age discrimination may at first be bewilderment, followed by anger, but as one finds one’s self further marginalized, the loss of self-confidence follows. “Could I have done something differently?” one asks. “Was it something that I said?” is another question. “Have I not kept up my skills?” is yet another.

And while all of these questions might, in some respects, be answered in the affirmative, we fear coming to grips with what is really going on: we are being thrown to the curb, consigned to the dump for supposedly old people.

The other implication is just as problematic and, indeed, equally devastating. You can see it by looking into the eyes of individuals who have stayed in certain jobs way beyond when they should have departed. They have held on tight, fearing to take risks in exploring other options due to an unease as to the future. In fact, an unease based on the sense that if they try something else, they might just fail and they will have, as a result, lost everything. As a result, they hang on, neither growing nor improving, but hanging on for dear life, fearing that any other decision will result in disaster. In a peculiar fashion, such individuals serve to produce an ‘organizational constipation’ which blocks the organization’s growth, i.e., no one can move anywhere. Yet there is no reason to be surprised by such behavior since such individuals know that at a certain age or point, one tends to be pushed out unless one is particularly lucky. So, the thinking goes, why take the risks.

There is almost a fear among older activists that to raise the question of age discrimination will result in two responses. The first is confirmation in front of the whole world that, yes, you are old. The second is self-inflicted: that one believes that they sound as if they wish to be pitied. Thus, de-commissioning gets handled in silence and in private.

When I was in my 20s and 30s I encountered older veterans of the progressive social movements who were quite bitter. They may have been red-baited out of this or that movement, or they may have been de-commissioned by the movement itself. They felt as if what they had to offer was no longer valued and that there was nothing that they had to bring to the table. This sense of being cast aside was held-in most of the time, but periodically it would explode outward with an intense anger that was rarely understood.

While it is true that each generation, to borrow from Frantz Fanon, has an historic task or challenge which it must either fulfill or fail, and while it is further true that each new generation brings forward new ideas—and sometimes rekindles old ideas—for society, it is also the case, as the metaphor goes, that we all stand on the shoulders of those who have preceded us. For too many progressives this has meant nothing more than a nod to earlier generations, a reference to respected “elders”, and then a quick dismissal of the role of older activists and any current contributions that they can offer. As a result, instead of building multi-generational movements, generational activists come to resemble a massive human wave assault whereby they plunge into action and, by their late 40s/early 50s are expected—by the outside world—to be worn out, burned up, grown up (and have become an “adult”) or, at best, standing on the legendary iconic platform.

We cannot expect that a capitalist society will do anything that challenges this methodology. Within the progressive movements, however, something can be done and it must be done through the construction of practices of mutual respect. But it must also be done through identifying real and constructive roles that older activists can play that are more than symbolic. Some people are capable of leadership roles into their 80s; others wish a lower profile role; still others can serve as excellent and conscious mentors. It, therefore, becomes a matter of the will of the movement to find appropriate roles rather than reinforcing the humiliation that larger capitalist society perpetrates on its aging population day in and day out.