Age-Centered Racism: An Emergent Framework for Considering How Ageism and Racism Intersect

Age persists as an underappreciated area of inquiry among sociologists interested in exploring axes of inequality. In describing the American Sociological Association’s continued dismissal of age and aging in the planning of its annual meetings, Calasanti (2020) contends that ageism as a research subject is overlooked compared to topics such as racism, sexism, and classism. To emphasize this point, Ayalon and Tesch-Romer (2018: 3) write that ‘because age-related stereotypes are embedded in our lives, we disregard them and hardly notice their effects’. Most laypeople, and too often, sociologists alike, overlook age as a social construct (Laz, 1998). Age needs to come to the forefront alongside these other prominent areas of inequality as a salient point of division in society. Furthermore, ‘expanding existing efforts to encompass . . . dimensions [of age] tied less to chronology, holds particular promise for advancing understanding of the social construction of age and its connection to other axes of inequality’ (Johfre and Saperstein, 2023: 16). Given the growing acknowledgment of the necessity for studying the role of age and ageism in individuals’ experiences of oppression, the concept proposed in this article foregrounds the role of age and complicates existing understandings of marginalization by identifying a more specified form of intersectional racism: age-centered racism. I am focusing primarily on phenotype, I conceive of racism as a system of inequality and power that is deeply intrenched in the structures of society (Ray, 2022). I am theorizing specifically about racism in the United States, where I study both race and age as systemic social constructions. I acknowledge that given how race and racism are structured and understood differently in contexts outside of the United States, my proposed ideas may not be universally applicable.

Roth (2016) describes race as having ‘multiple dimensions’. As such, the word ‘race’ may be used to signify a variety of concepts, including racial identity, self-classification, observed race, reflected race, phenotype, and racial ancestry. For the purposes of this article, I am focusing primarily on phenotype and its role in shaping observed race, the race that others believe a person to be (Roth, 2016). Given my focus on how one’s outward appearances affect others’ perceptions of them, and thus, how they are treated, this definition of race is most appropriate.

Unlike racial and gendered identities, of which people are often only made self-aware when they are in a disadvantaged position, self-consciousness of chronological age is ubiquitous. White individuals in the US may not conceive of themselves as having an important racial identity because white supremacy is embedded and normalized in our daily lives (McIntosh, 2001 [1988]). Similarly, cis-men may not think about their gender because the patriarchy is so fundamental to social norms. While the study of age and ageism is associated with older adults, the standardization and institutionalization of the life course (Kohli, 2007), in addition to rituals and rites of passage centered on age throughout our lives (e.g. annual birthday celebrations; obtaining a driver’s license; voting age; age of legal alcohol assumption), make age something that is more visible for everyone throughout the entire course of our lives. Like race and gender, age is a social construct that is not neutral nor value-free, but everyone is arguably conscious of their age identities to varying degrees.

Part of the reason that more research energy needs to be dedicated to the study of ageism in particular is because of its understudied, unnamed nuances. To begin, it is important to define what is meant by ageism. Ageism was first defined by Butler (1969: 243) as ‘prejudice by one age group against another age group’, but has since been used to describe age-based discrimination – most often, against older adults – although it is acknowledged that younger people can also experience ageism (Ayalon and Tesch-Romer, 2018). Ageism is different than racism, sexism, and classism: while anyone of any age could experience ageism, a white person in the US cannot experience racism (DiAngelo, 2011); a cisgender man cannot experience sexism; and a wealthy person cannot experience economic disadvantage as individuals in privileged positions within those stratification systems. The lines delineating distributions of power between age groups, and thereby defining who is advantaged, who is oppressed, and who experiences ageism, is often situational and interlocks with other schemes of injustice that may depend on the conditions of specific social institutions and organizations.

To briefly punctuate this point, numerous studies highlight how ageism may affect people in professional contexts. Younger people may be assumed to be unprepared, incompetent, or immature compared to their older colleagues in some professional workspaces (e.g. Chasteen et al., 2021; Deal et al., 2010; Finkelstein et al., 2013). Due to the potentially inaccurate assumption that younger workers have fewer years of professional experience, there is an implicit assumption that given their chronological ages, younger workers are less worthy of respect and unqualified for leadership positions. In other work contexts, however, older adults experience ageism at work as it may be assumed that they are less capable of keeping up with new technology, and unable to compete with their younger coworkers (e.g. Avolio and Barrett, 1987; Finkelstein et al., 1995; Lassus et al., 2015). Older adults may internalize age bias, and feel obligated to retire, or endure pressure to step away from opportunities because of their senior status (e.g. Kahana et al., 2017). Age and experience are valued in some professions, while youthfulness and fresh ideas trump wisdom and dated expertise in others. While racism and sexism can be somewhat malleable depending on the context, one could argue that ageism is more pliable and less predictable. The malleability of age requires more scrutinization given that, hypothetically, anyone could experience ageism at different points in the life course.

Importantly, studying ageism requires an embrace of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991), as ageism intersects with other axes of oppression in ways that make ageism more detrimental for marginalized segments of society. For example, expectations for appearing ageless may harm women more than men (Sontag, 2017 [1972]), affecting women in areas ranging from perceived sexual attractiveness to marketability when applying for employment. In addition, the effects of ageism may have more deleterious effects on older Black workers than older white workers (Wilson and Roscigno, 2018), due to older Black workers contending with both ageism and racism.

Examining ageism using an intersectional perspective is not a new approach to research in this area (e.g. Gutterman, 2022; Hand and Ihara, 2024; Steward et al., 2023), but identifying specific forms of oppression that may unfold in which ideas about age are tactically deployed to further racist beliefs may be underexplored. Age is manipulated in strategic ways by American social institutions such as the media that re-enforce racist belief systems, thereby illustrating the situational nature of ageism. For example, white men who commit mass shootings are often conveyed as victimized ‘boys’ who are unjustly plagued by mental illness, while Black teenage boys are too often characterized as ‘young men’ who are pathologized as menaces to society (Goff et al., 2014). Age – both perceived and chronological – is a device that institutions can exploit to advance their sexist and racist agendas and further engrain the patriarchy and white supremacy into the fabric of our society. These examples are illustrative of what Bonilla-Silva (2011) calls ‘racial grammar’, and show how language can be used to push a racial agenda forward. The ways in which age is employed in this way are underexplored, particularly because both chronological age and perceived age interact with one another and can shape these dynamics differentially. As Johfre and Saperstein (2023: 4) write, ‘the ability to enact a particular age depends on how a person is positioned across other axes of difference’.

Even though we have engaged in research that looks at ageism using an intersectional approach, sociology is missing a specific concept that better captures how age and ageist ideologies can be exploited to further other systems of oppression. Just as age 30 in 2022 is considered a young adult in the United States, while being 30 in 1900 meant your life was likely two-thirds completed, common understandings of age are also contextual depending not only on the era and social situation but also the person experiencing it. Age, and thus, ageism, requires a consideration of context and necessitates filtering through other -isms in order to get a more complete picture of lived experience. In this vein, research exploring how perceived age affects experiences of ageism and advances racist ideologies needs to be unpacked. Likewise, it is necessary to consider how the perceived neutral affect and universality of age makes it well-positioned for masking discrimination seemingly unrelated to age. ‘Future research’, as Johfre and Saperstein (2023: 14) write, ‘should carefully consider not only the relevant cues to age categories but also how multiple and overlapping signifiers of age, race, gender, and other axes of inequality are perceived, interpreted, and acted upon simultaneously’.

To this end, I propose a conceptual framework for understanding how racism and ageism may intersect for people of color in the US of all ages: age-centered racism. Age-centered racism occurs when people draw upon stereotypes and ageist ideologies without acknowledging how racism is entrenched in and central to problematic, prejudicial statements about racial minorities. As an example, youthful appearing Black people may be disrespected on the grounds of age in professional settings, when in reality, the verbalized ‘grounds of age’ may actually be concealing conscious and subconscious racism. Considering the cultural idiom ‘Asians don’t raisin’, it is possible that Asians and Asian Americans could have similar experiences. To illustrate this point, previous research explored how women of color in academia noted being mistaken for students (Johnson-Bailey and Lee, 2005; Muhs et al., 2012). These studies highlight how ‘perceived youthfulness creates problems that can undermine authority’ (Bailey and Miller, 2015: 176), which can be particularly problematic for women of color who are already combatting gendered racism, which characterizes the interlocking nature of sexism and racism (Essed, 1991), at their campus workplaces. In another study, I found that Black professionals perceived that their white colleagues ‘complimented’ them in ways that they received as undercover racism. One respondent, 31-year-old Jaye, remarked on how her colleagues marveled at how ‘articulate’ she was given how youthful they perceived her to be, to which Jaye internally responds: ‘I direct this whole program. Of course, I am articulate’ (Smith-Tran, 2022: 6). Jaye felt that her colleague’s prejudicial beliefs about Black women and their deservingness were masked by their ‘surprise’ at her competence, given how her age was inaccurately perceived. Jaye’s experience is illustrative of age-centered racism, and highlights how age can be used to mask prejudicial beliefs.

Age-centered racism is akin to colorblind racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2006), which describes how too often people claim an inability or unwillingness to see race and acknowledge racism, and consequently, reproduce racial inequality by deeming racial stratification a non-issue. At its core, colorblind racism is about ‘explaining racial matters as the outcomes of nonracial dynamics’ (Bonilla-Silva, 2020: 343). Along these lines, age-centered racism is about masking racist belief systems by focusing on age during personal interactions. Given how widespread the desire for agelessness is in an anti-aging society such as the US, the path is cleared for white people to mask their racist beliefs about Black people in ‘compliments’ surrounding their youthful appearances, especially because ‘Black don’t crack’ is perceived as a neutral to positive social phenomena. Importantly, this can happen subconsciously: given how white heteronormativity and Black inferiority are essentialized in American society, age-centered racism could occur unbeknownst to the one acting problematically. Like colorblind racism and kindred to characteristics of ‘the veil’ (Du Bois, 1903), age-centered racism is racism under a cloak that oftentimes, white people cannot see. Compared to overtly racist remarks, remarking about a Black person’s young features seems less problematic despite the implications embedded in these comments: implicit in these remarks are assumptions about a lack in wisdom, experience, competence, and expertise. Consequently, age-centered racism perpetuates both racist and ageist ideologies by drawing on prejudicial assumptions about both race and age.

Age-centered racism goes beyond raced ageism, or aged racism. It is not the idea that people of color are more likely to be on the receiving end of ageism, nor does it indicate that ageism is worse for people of color, or that racism is worse for people who are perceived as too young or too old. Rather, age-centered racism is a distinct concept that describes how perpetrators are unaware of the ways in which their assumptions about age are steeped in racist ideologies, and consequently, the ramifications of their transgressions have interlocking ripple effects. This concept provides a distinctive framing for understanding this specific form of intersectional oppression. For example, stereotypes regarding incompetence among younger people align with stereotypes about the ineptitude of Black people, and therefore, an ageist statement about a Black person is not just ageist, but rather is racist and ageist. By bringing age to the forefront, their assumptions are under the guise of what the dominant culture conveys as a less problematic form of prejudice.

Age-centered racism is but one example of an emergent intersectional framework for considering the nuances and variabilities shaping ageism and racism. Given that racism is often experienced through a gendered lens, there may be situations in which age-centered gendered racism may be conceptually more fitting depending on the focus of analysis. Future research could further interrogate the intricacies and intersections of other systems of oppression. Intersectionality calls upon us to consider how systems of oppression intersect in ways that further marginalize people (Crenshaw, 1991), but how might it be helpful to name more of these specific, intersectional oppressions? Black feminism, for example, emerged to acknowledge the interlocking nature of sexism and racism for Black women and provide a foundation for acknowledging how feminism requires a more holistic approach if we are to truly advocate for equality for all women (e.g. Collins, 2022; Combahee River Collective, 1977; Lindsey, 2015). Relatedly, gendered racism captures the multiplicative nature of sexism and racism, and the understanding that ‘racial stereotypes, images, and beliefs are grounded in gendered ideals’ (Wingfield, 2009: 9). Gendered homophobia is another example of a named form of intersectional oppression, in this case, indicating how individuals identifying as gay or lesbian experience sexuality-based discrimination differently depending on their gender identity and corresponding expectations for enacted femininity and masculinity (e.g. Pascoe, 2012). It is useful to label the nuanced wrinkles in oppression that emerge in constantly evolving social research, as it better facilitates pinpointing their occurrences, understanding their repercussions, and building research agendas with more focused aims. In the case of coinciding ageism and racism, given the understudied nature of its varied occurrence, age-centered racism may provide a more concrete framework for studying how it unfolds. Given the persistence of ageism and racism, their apparent relationship to one another, and the nuanced ways that each are experienced in conjunction with one another, my proposed framework facilitates studying this specific form of intersectional marginalization with more precision.

In addition to emphasizing the importance of intersectional perspectives on age, ageism, and the ways that age can be manipulated to further discriminatory agendas, we must also consider the important differences between perceived and chronological age. In the case of youthful-looking Black professionals, it is not necessarily their chronological ages that drive their colleagues’ ageist beliefs. In fact, their chronological ages are often misperceived. Rather, perceived age is likely of utmost relevance in these instances, even though we often use the term ‘age’ to broadly encompass a concept we think is universally understood but in actuality can hold varied meanings. Disentangling different age identities and their role in experiences of ageism and racism are essential for having a fuller, more nuanced and precise picture of people’s experiences.

Ultimately, my aim is for this concept of age-centered racism to be a jumping-off point for future researchers to take a deeper dive into how we can work toward naming and exploring other types of discrimination that involve the intersection of age and ageism in its many forms, with other axes of inequality. It is a limitation that this framework may be most applicable in a US context, but my hope is that flexible thinking may allow for carrying some of these ideas over to other settings.