NJM 17 - prejudice in Each Day

Do you have any prejudices? If so, what are they?

I grew up in a proudly Scottish community. Unfortunately that also meant I grew up surrounded by white supremacy. As a white-presenting mixed race kid, I’m still unpacking how that screwed me up. I also grew up beside an Indigenous reserve, and went to school with lots of indigenous kids. Because of our colonialist education I did not understand what was being done to them. And then I moved to Manitoba where the racism against indigenous people was so overt it was impossible to not see. I’ve had to, and continue to, do work to decolonize myself, find my place as a mixed race person in the world and reconcile that with my privilege of being mostly treated like a white woman. Except not totally because I am often subject to people’s questions about “where are [my] parent’s from?” and also people trying to guess my ethnicity. So that’s fun.
As a member of the Alphabet Mafia I’ve had to do a lot of work finding my place, there, too. It wasn’t until 2018 that I realized that I am not an ally. I am a memberof the 2SLGBTQ+ community, and I have been since I was TWELVE. So that was a fun prejudice that I had to unpack.

But there is one prejudice that I am acutely aware that I commit on the regular, and I really don’t know how to fix it. I am exceptionally ageist. Part of it is being a millennial child of Boomer parents in this post-capitalist hellscape. There is so much wrong with our world that can be directly pinned on Boomers. And yes, “not all” and whatever, we’re all part of this bullshit system. But there are very few people of a certain age doing the work that the younger generations are trying so hard to do. Like decolonization.

My favourite example of the hypocrisy of ageism is that when anyone talks about upper age limits on drivers licenses (which does not exist in this province but does exist elsewhere), the older folks cry ageism. Not realizing that AGEISM is literally why you have to be 16 years old before you can GET your license. Because ability, safety, responsibility. And yet when old folks are hitting the gas pedal instead of the brake and driving through windows or running down pedestrians, how dare anyone suggest that old folks need to have their abilities tested.

Anyway. See, I’m still working on it. And I’m going to be An Old (I already am to some people), so believe me when I say I’m trying to figure this one out.
If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them.