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Anti-Prejudice & Hate: Ageism

A research topic guide covering aspects of anti-prejudice and hate.

Research & Reference Materials (Log in Required)

The Harmful Effects of Ageism

Youth are often regarded as inexperienced and entitled, while older people are widely seen as inept mentally and physically. There is evidence, however, that these are both false narratives.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnp3T4Yzaws

Let's End Ageism

It's not the passage of time that makes it so hard to get older. It's ageism, a prejudice that pits us against our future selves -- and each other. Ashton Applewhite urges us to dismantle the dread and mobilize against the last socially acceptable prejudice. "Aging is not a problem to be fixed or a disease to be cured," she says. "It is a natural, powerful, lifelong process that unites us all."

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfjzkO6_DEI

Books & Films: Check Out at McKee Library

The End Game: How Inequality Shapes Our Final Years

Senior citizens from all walks of life face a gauntlet of physical, psychological, and social hurdles. But do the disadvantages some people accumulate over the course of their lives make their final years especially difficult? Or does the quality of life among poor and affluent seniors converge at some point? The End Game investigates whether persistent socioeconomic, racial, and gender divisions in America create inequalities that structure the lives of the elderly. Corey Abramson's portraits of seniors from diverse backgrounds offer an intimate look at aging as a stratified social process. They illustrate that disparities in wealth, access to health care, neighborhood conditions, and networks of friends and family shape how different people understand and adapt to the challenges of old age. Social Security and Medicare are helpful but insufficient to alleviate deep structural inequalities. Yet material disadvantages alone cannot explain why seniors respond to aging in different ways. Culture, in all its variations, plays a crucial role. Abramson argues that studying the experience of aging is central to understanding inequality, in part because this segment of the population is rapidly growing. But there is another reason. The shared challenges of the elderly--declining mobility and health, loss of loved ones and friends--affect people across the socioeconomic spectrum, allowing for powerful ethnographic comparisons that are difficult to make earlier in life. The End Game makes clear that, despite the shared experiences of old age, inequality remains a powerful arbiter of who wins and who loses in American society.

Aged by Culture

Americans enjoy longer lives and better health, yet we are becoming increasingly obsessed with trying to stay young. What drives the fear of turning 30, the boom in anti-aging products, the wars between generations? What men and women of all ages have in common is that we are being insidiously aged by the culture in which we live. In this illuminating book, Margaret Morganroth Gullette reveals that aging doesn't start in our chromosomes, but in midlife downsizing, the erosion of workplace seniority, threats to Social Security, or media portrayals of "aging Xers" and "greedy" Baby Boomers. To combat the forces aging us prematurely, Gullette invites us to change our attitudes, our life storytelling, and our society. Part intimate autobiography, part startling cultural expose, this book does for age what gender and race studies have done for their categories. Aged by Culture is an impassioned manifesto against the pernicious ideologies that steal hope from every stage of our lives.

World Growing Old

'The inspirational Jeremy Seabrook beats any celebrity radical in the art of speaking hard truths through fine prose.' Boyd Tonkin, The Independent'Jeremy Seabrook [has] a preacher's talent for prophesy and a capacity for righteous indignation reminiscent of George Orwell.' The GuardianFor the first time in mankind's history, the world's population is ageing. Decade by decade, people are living longer than they ever have before. For rich countries in the west, the problems are obvious -- economies rely on youthful populations to provide for those who have retired. As the population ages, we face a profound economic and social crisis -- how do we care for the elderly when pensions and social security systems are under threat, housing is short and fewer young people are entering the workplace? There are anxieties at the highest level in the U.S., that an ageing population may make the country forfeit its image of youthful dynamism, as new creative generations come of age in the South.Yet this is only half the story. Populations in the poorer countries of the South are also ageing. Life-expectancy has increased due the availability of life-saving medicine. Child mortality has decreased, so people are having smaller families. India will soon have one of the largest populations of over-sixties. The one-child policy in China will similarly lead to a severe imbalance in the age-profile of the people.In A World Grown Old, distinguished author and journalist Jeremy Seabrook examines the real implications of the ageing phenomenon and challenges our preconceptions about how it should be tackled. Arguing that the accumulated skills and experience of the elderly should be employed to enrich society, rather than being perceived as a 'burden', he makes a passionate case for a radical re-thinking of our attitude to population issues, migration, social structures and employment policy. Illustrating that the reintegration of the elderly into societies worldwide is vital for our survival, this lively and readable book will be of interest to activists and NGOs, students and policy-makers everywhere.

The Longevity Revolution

Pulitzer-prize winning author Dr. Robert Butler coined the term "ageism" and made "Alzheimer's" a familiar word. Now he brings his formidable knowledge and experience in aging issues to a recent and unprecedented achievement: the extension of human life expectancy by thirty years. As Butler shows, our society had not yet adapted to this change. The U.S. has not made a research investment in aging. Only eleven medical schools out of 145 have geriatrics departments compared to England where geriatrics is the number two specialty. We have not solidified private pension plans or strengthened Social Security to ensure that people do not outlive their resources. In this urgent and ultimately optimistic book, Dr. Butler shows why and how we must re-examine our personal and societal approach to aging right now, so that the boomers and the generations that follow may have a financially secure, vigorous, and healthy final chapter life.

Internet Resources