Will we blanch at this twenty years from now?

Driving a familiar neighborhood route yesterday I was reminded that within a few months I will be visited by a representative of an insurance company who will evaluate my mental acuity and my driving ability. I am scheduled for this evaluation because of one and only one factor: my chronological age.  I experience this event with pain and with anger for the implementation of unmasked ageism that it is.

The context is this: the insurance company with which many – and my own – religious congregations do business recommends this testing as a part of their risk management strategy. Clearly the insurance company values holding down expenses. A valid and responsible goal. Clearly the congregations engaged with this insurance company want to keep expenses down and want to keep members safe. Again, a valid and responsible goal.

Let me share a story here told to me several years ago by a Chicana Sister in Texas. Every year in the elementary school she attended, there was a ‘lice check’ on the first day of school. This was the procedure:  every Latino student, and only Latino students, were called out of the classroom to be examined by a nurse.  Shocking. Shameful. Children, based on their ethnicity and only on their ethnicity were treated in a discriminatory manner. The practice is clearly racist and would never even be considered in today’s culture. Our society is more ‘woke’ to such blatant racism.

No one in the school system, I am sure, set out to act in a racist way, in a way that denigrated a class of students, that brought shame and embarrassment. The school system had a goal of maintaining good public health.  Again, a valid and responsible goal. The error in this 1950s practice was the means by which a valid and responsible goal was sought. A noble end never justifies a racist means.

A noble and valid end never justifies an ageist means either. There is assuredly no ill intent on anyone’s part in this present practice of driving evaluation based solely on chronological age. Simultaneously there clearly is no awareness that it is an prejudicial, age-shaming practice.

Some Sisters shrug and say ‘it’s okay’, which can be read as evidence of internalized ageism: ‘I’m not quite as worthy a person as I was when I was younger.’  ‘The very fact of my chronological age lessens my value.’ This is the age-shame that accompanies internalized ageism, an all too common reality among elders that is entrenched even more deeply by overt ageist policies.

As warriors for social justice, Sisters have stood with the oppressed and marginalized in countless ways and places throughout our history. At times we have also succumbed to the values of the broader culture in practicing racism, for example. (See NY Times “Nuns Who Bought and Sold Human Beings”). Awakening to an awareness of this social sin of not honoring the rights and dignity of the other, Congregations of Sisters have taken public action to express their contrition prejudice as and to ask for forgiveness.

Ageism is an insidious, harmful-to-all-of-us prejudice. It harms our future selves and negatively impacts achievement, health, longevity, and well-being as Becca Levy’s research has consistently shown.

Called to a prophetic, counter-cultural stance, can we Sisters awaken to such instances of ageism, recognize that the end does not justify an ageist means, and seek an insurance solution that honors fiscal responsibility, safety and the simultaneous dignity of the individual?  Yes, we can! The first step is naming the issue.  Done!