Diversity Gazette #67: Bringing Awareness to Civic Participation in Elder Folks of Color
by MPA student Brianna Beadle
Civic engagement is the name of the game in public service. It is integral to how we as public administrators better our service delivery, prioritize public feedback, stay accountable, and engage with citizens. Older folks historically are known to be among the largest groups in civic participation, usually outpacing young people and middle-aged folks. However, a common trend among studies on civic participation in older adults is that less than 2% of studies consider the experiences of ethnoracial minorities, immigrants, and intersections of oppression. Society has a history of erasing the experiences of people of color. Combining systemic racism with ageism has created a large gap in the consideration of elderly people of color’s civic participation.
Intersectionality is the idea that people have overlapping identities and thus experience discrimination differently because of the combination of their whole selves. Ageism is a type of discrimination against older people, but older people of color experience discrimination at worse levels than older white people because of the compounded aspect of race along with age. DEI efforts have emerged in recent years to try to address the issue of structural barriers when it comes to marginalized groups. However, there is a lot to be said about the surface-level efforts that fail to look at people as whole beings with intersecting identities that systemically block them from resources. DEI efforts can separately make efforts to reach more people of color and older populations, but are they at the same time looking to reach out to older populations of color? That is the question more public service leaders need to ask themselves.
The elderly members of our community have many important insights from years of experience and wisdom. Often, when we see older people participating in civic engagement through voting, council meetings, and volunteering, they feel that they take over all these spaces because retired people are the only people with time on their hands, leaving little room for others. These are often valid thoughts because we should strive to have more range in the types of people who engage in civic participation, but the wisdom from older people is invaluable to have our processes. This thought process needs to be turned into a question of how society can reconceptualize itself to better include historically marginalized perspectives. The solution is not kicking people out of the room but including different people and perspectives.
To do this many steps need to be taken. Recognizing these systemic inequalities is the first one. However, addressing these barriers has turned into a political battle that makes it hard to address. To truly promote inclusive civic participation, public service leaders must go beyond tokenistic efforts and recognize invaluable wisdom that is ignored daily. The need for inclusive approaches that recognize the need for social cohesion across diversity is grossly underestimated.
Despite systemic processes prohibiting people from participating in traditional forms of civic participation, older people of color still find ways of engaging with the community through mentoring youth and their religious institutions. So how can public institutions protect how older people of color participate while opening up spaces for them to participate in other ways?
Reference:
Reyes, L. (2023). Experiences of civic participation among older African American and Latinx immigrant adults in the context of an ageist and racist society. Research on Aging, 45(1), 92-103.
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