I’m kicking off 2025 with a big new idea: let’s come together and talk about age and power. I’ve dubbed it YODA, for Youngers and Olders Dismantling Ageism, and NextAvenue just published my article about it.
These conversations could take place at any scale and any context. They would:
• derail old. vs. young framing;
• identify shared barriers and goals; and
• help build a movement for age equity that represents—and outlives—us all.
Let’s run with it!
I’m not sure quite why, but the reply panel requires at least 15 characters and all I wanted to say is “I’m in”
This is great – no question.
However, I want to raise one question (perhaps related to “method”). Sociological approaches (evident in pronouncements along the lines, “youngers are more visible and have more cultural clout, but less access to leadership roles. Olders have more wealth and more political clout, though those with neither disappear”), are “true” if you add up some stats describing broad social groups (isn’t this kind of generalization exactly part of the problem?), but too coarse to deal with what’s really at stake, for they obscure the extent to which being younger or older is *never* enough, as evidenced by the many youngers with no cultural clout, or the many olders with no wealth or political clout. Perhaps it’s better to say that “youth” and “age” carry associations facilitating the transfer or clout, power and wealth along the lines you suggest, but that this is in now way sufficient to guarantee that this transfer will happen for some particular person in some particular circumstance. And why is that? That is surely a central question! Otherwise you throw both poor older people and cloutless younger people under the bus in the service of bad argument!
Having said this, I want to stress that this initiative has my full support!
I also think that an analysis in terms of power might be necessary, but it’s also inadequate. Ageism is not reducible to the question of who does and doesn’t have power, just as an analysis of prejudice, stereotype, and so on, is inadequate without an analysis of power!