Calling Someone “Too Old” Is Ageist

Published on August 4, 2024, filed under Everything Else (RSS feed for all categories).

If you’ve followed the Biden/Trump U.S. election campaign until Biden withdrew his candidacy, you’ve seen ageism in action—not only by the Trump side, making Biden’s age a campaign target (which, pun intended, didn’t seem to age well), but by traditional and social media and a great number of people in general.

How can we tell?

By the way we talk about age.

The biggest telltale is to suggest someone was “too old.” (It’s nothing new!)

It may seem innocuous because it’s so widespread, but “too old” is the ageist version of “too female” and “too black.”

Apart from recognizing and calling out ageist language, we benefit from talking about age in a respectful and non-judgmental way. After all, ageism is incredibly stupid because we all, discriminators included, become a target of it.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t set expectations, or can’t be critical.

For example, it seems legitimate to set the expectation that a presidential candidate responds swiftly and to the point when being addressed. (That may not have anything to do with how well they would govern, but that looks like a different discussion.)

Assuming the expectation is relevant and constructive, setting it is actually not only not discriminatory—it’s also more useful because it equally filters out younger candidates that may not be able to respond coherently within a particular time frame, and because it includes older candidates who may well be capable of doing so.

This is so because (lack of) ability has nothing to do with age. ^*

This brings us back to the beginning: One important step against ageism is to unlink age and ability—someone either is capable or able to do something, or they aren’t (sometimes not anymore, sometimes not yet). That requires us to be specific about the abilities we expect, to then consider everyone in the process. ^†

“Too old”—that’s ageism, and we need to stop it. In everyone’s interest.

^* I wondered whether to even include this note, but here it is: We could probably talk about a correlation between (lack of) ability and age, but it may be exactly the incapacity to do something useful with it that leads us to ageism. It seems that at this point, it’s more helpful for us to establish that ability has nothing to do with age, so that we wean ourselves off the intellectual laziness that is not being clear about our expectations of a person or their role, and discriminating for something unrelated that no one has control over.

^† Doesn’t that mean there’s no “too young,” either? Yes and no. “Yes” for all purposes of working with ability. “No” from perspectives of responsibility, culture, and law. This question is more complex (and this post about the ageist notion of anyone being “too old”).

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m a contributor to several web standards, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development (and engineering management), but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (Please be critical, interpret charitably, and give feedback.)