AN EPILOGUE PROVIDES AUTHORS WITH opportunities to raise issues that remain either unresolved or are particularly controversial for the profession as we embrace an assets paradigm toward boomers of color. Some of these issues emerged through the process of writing the book. However, others were predictable and, based on daily events in the country, painfully obvious.
The field of gerontology must make a concerted effort to recruit, train, and support social workers that reflect the racial and ethnic composition of baby boomers of color. This necessitates development of special initiatives that recruit a cadre of social workers interested in this group into graduate school and the field of gerontology, preparing those who are not of color to undertake culturally competent practice with this growing cohort. However, this charge must be viewed against a backdrop that is increasingly antithetical to older adults and national concerns about budget deficits and debt.
Older adult-serving institutions, too, must undertake special efforts to develop outreach and service provisions that consider the cultural values, traditions, and language preferences of baby boomers of color (Cummings et al., 2011). These efforts, it should be emphasized, must take into account the unique talents and needs that boomers bring, and organizational leaders should not automatically think that this new group will just mix into the fold of existing services. The literature is quite clear that this age cohort is different than any of those that preceded it.
Fiscal constraints combined with concerns about the “excessive demands” of baby boomers in general, and those of color in particular, will make funding these initiatives controversial. Nevertheless, the sheer size of the boomer generation of color cannot be ignored from a policy, research, and practice perspective. The increase in boomers of color with language preferences other than English necessitates a workforce better able to meet their service needs in their language of preference. A total of eleven issues have been highlighted, although the reader can no doubt debate these issues and substitute others not covered.
1. Racial disparities, racism, and boomers: The primary focus of this book is to highlight boomers of color from an assets/strengths perspective. The reader, I sincerely hope, has gained new insights into and appreciation for this topic. The backdrop to this focus will find the ugly head of racism and other forms of oppression for boomers of color, with multiple jeopardies operating to shape the social, wealth, and health status of this group.
As social workers, we are well versed on the pernicious nature of racism and how it compromises the daily existence of people of color of all ages. Addressing racism is part of the National Social Work Association’s Code of Ethics. A socioecological perspective on this subject serves to illustrate how discrimination in one sphere or arena translates into deleterious consequences in other areas, as in the case of discrimination in housing, for example.
The dismal socioeconomic circumstances that the vast majority of boomers of color face necessitates that we as social workers, practitioners and academics, never have the luxury of dismissing these forces in our assessment of and recommendations for working with boomers of color as they transition into retirement, for those fortunate enough to have this as an option.
2. Aging as a social-cultural construct: Age is in the eye of the beholder. Ours is a society that views age from a chronological standpoint and attaches profound social meaning to it as well. Aging, however, is a natural developmental process that must be viewed through a social-cultural lens. The social work profession understands this viewpoint and why social interventions must be predicated upon the perspectives (values, beliefs, attitudes) of those we wish to reach. Nevertheless, this perspective must play out against a backdrop that often equates aging with sickness and death.
As emphasized throughout this book, current popular definitions overwhelmingly stress that to age successfully we must continue to remain active, preferably through continued employment or civic engagement. However, tying aging to economic productivity is such a narrow, and I and many others would argue, capitalistic viewpoint and limits our understanding of the myriad ways that civic engagement can be realized. Aging, in addition, is not a disease that we can medicalize and in the process make considerable profits on; this view limits the role the profession can play in helping boomers transition into older adulthood and retirement. Boomers, regardless of their ethnic and racial backgrounds, are an expanding market for all kinds of rejuvenation products and surgical procedures that seek to keep them feeling and looking young. Aging is no longer associated with wisdom, but increasingly looked at from a deficit perspective.
The commercialization of aging that goes hand in hand with defining successful aging as looking and feeling younger further stigmatizes those boomers who cannot afford the products and medical treatments necessary to make them look and feel younger. These older adults, it must be noted, have suffered the consequences of poor medical treatment and employment in sectors that take their toll on their physical appearances. Some critics of this viewpoint would go so far as to argue that we must continue to work in order to afford the products and medical procedures associated with possessing a “youthful appearance.”
3. The financial future of the nation is at stake: It is a sad state of affairs to put the entire burden of the financial future of this nation on one generation, as in the case of boomers, and blame them for a future economic crisis that will forever alter the nation. The term greedy geezers seems to capture this state of mind. A false argument has been made that the boomer generation got the nation into this trouble (debt) and it is only right to have boomers get us out of it through acceptance of blame and personal sacrifice. This false argument has been addressed in numerous sections among the chapters of this book. The current debate about the nation’s debt ceiling, and the need to control current and future costs, must be a shared generational responsibility that does not single out a particular age group.
Nevertheless, an emphasis on individualism and self-sacrifice for the good of the nation will have a disproportionate impact on boomer subgroups that can ill afford to make economic sacrifices through lower Social Security payments and limiting access to quality health care. The argument that an expanding economy will result in increased payments into the Trust Fund, along with adjustments to eligibility and payments, can help ensure that current and future beneficiaries benefit.
4. Making the invisible visible: As social workers, we have confronted the insidiousness in the way in which society makes marginalized groups disappear from public discourse on policies and then makes them reappear when it is advantageous for making a point about policy. Invariably this rediscovery results in a blaming-the-victim consequence. The concept of blaming the victim is etched in every social worker’s vocabulary and captures this perspective very well. A focus on baby boomers of color makes this age group appear as if out of the blue, but in the process opens them up for possible targeting. However, empowerment and the resulting social change that can transpire when groups become visible are, in and of themselves, empowering.
Social justice values and principles, as a result, aid social workers in crafting interventions and launching advocacy and system change efforts that highlight the unique strengths and challenges facing boomers of color in a changing society. These values and principles help the profession navigate socially and politically through heated debates about Social Security and Medicare, for example, because, as already noted in
chapters 2,
5, and
6, these boomers share unprecedented challenges in having their economic and health security needs met in the forthcoming years.
Making baby boomers of color visible, however, must not focus on or highlight their needs. This is not to say that we cannot give voice to these needs. However, we must also focus on their contributions and assets—a central message of this book. Do we have a definitive understanding of these assets? No. However, no marginalized group, regardless of its marginalization, consists of nothing but needs and problems. The fact that it has survived and, in some cases, preserved its cultural heritage, must not be lost on the social work profession and society.
5. Diversity and the challenge of reaching boomers: The quest and need for health and social services to be culturally competent is one that we as social workers are well versed in. This goal, however, will in all likelihood be undertaken against a highly charged political background that finds it increasingly easier to create different types of warfare between groups, be they racial/ethnic, age, socioeconomic class, sexual identity, or gender. The increasing diversity among the ranks of boomers necessitates that the profession and organizations wishing to serve them be cognizant of how increasingly diverse this group has become and avoid painting a picture of boomers that is simplistic and monolithic in composition.
We cannot group African Americans, Asians, Latinos/as, and Native Americans into broad categories without concerted efforts to examine how gender identity, immigration status, acculturation, and place of residence (urban, suburban, rural) impact on their well-being, how they define themselves, and how their communities view them. Further, communities of color are not monolithic in composition, thereby requiring serious efforts at considering “place” as a key factor to go along with other sociodemographic factors in developing a picture of boomers of color.
Social work has understood the meaning and importance of sociocultural context (space and place) in helping the profession respond to current and projected needs. This nuanced approach toward boomers of color is a necessity for social work and other helping professions to understand the situation many boomers of color find themselves in and what is needed to help them achieve the multifaceted aspects associated with well-being. Diversity is increasing in our society, and the importance of “keeping up” with new and varied ways of understanding groups of people will also increase in significance in the future as the nation continues graying and browning and new groups enter the country.
6. The future of social insurance: What does the future hold in store for advocates of social insurance and social contracts in the United States? Hopefully, our future will be different from that of Europe, where efforts to limit social insurance in scale and scope are gaining traction (Walker, 2009) in attempts to address fiscal deficits and debt.
There is no question that baby boomers, Social Security, and Medicare, will be part of the debate in post-2012 presidential elections and congressional campaigns and may be part of the political landscape in even more distant elections because so much is at stake for the nation. Entitlement reform is very much in our vocabulary as social entitlements get debated in political arenas. Who “loses” and “wins” must not be lost to view, because there surely are winners and losers.
Any effort to significantly alter expectations of boomers will have profound social, economic, and political consequences that will reverberate throughout all sectors of this country. These efforts must be sufficiently nuanced to take into account their impact on all sections of the population rather than paint a population group with a broad stroke. Further, boomers of color do not exist in isolation from their families and communities. The impact of these changes cannot be viewed from a narrow scope.
7. Social work values and boomers of color: The current debate about the future of Social Security and Medicare strikes at a basic set of social work values pertaining to social justice that guides us and serves as a moral compass to where we stand as a profession. It is of critical importance that the profession not lose sight of how social justice values serve to ground interventions and advocacy efforts. Unfortunately, as noted throughout this book, proponents of drastic changes to social insurance programs have eschewed any reference to values, although their arguments do embrace implicit ones.
Our abilities to help broaden the discourse on boomers or color, and those most vulnerable within the boomer generation, will help silence or counter the chores of naysayers associated with the “graying” and “browning” of this country. Aging is a natural progression that must not be stigmatized and politicized in national discourses. Our work with this group will help put voices and faces to the numbers that are often bandied about without regard to the stories of population groups that are often invisible, or scapegoated, in our society. Baby boomers of color that are low income and low wealth are such an example. Debates on changing the retirement age or reducing benefits will have a disproportionate impact on boomers of color.
8. A nation of immigrants will again be a saving grace for the United States: This country’s demographic composition evolved over many decades and has been a strength rather than a weakness for the nation. European countries that have systematically worked to exclude immigrants are now struggling with replenishing their ranks because of low birth rates as their societies continue to gray in record numbers, resulting in great concerns about the future of these countries (Daley & Kulish, 2013). The United States is in the enviable position of not having to struggle to replace its aging and dying population because of the role immigration has played in the distant, and not so distant, past.
However, the politicization and criminalization of immigrants has profound short- and long-term consequences for boomers and older adults, with certain sectors of the country where they reside in significant numbers being more adversely affected than other regions. Criminalizing groups of individuals who are law abiding when the only “crime” they have committed is to be in this country unauthorized raises important social justice issues for the profession.
The ability of Congress to develop an immigration policy that is nonpunitive will go a long way toward helping these newcomers, boomers and nonboomers, to enter the American mainstream and play an even more active role in contributing and shaping this country in the twenty-first century. The outcome of the debates on immigration, as this book goes to press, will impact current and future generations of newcomers and the communities they live in, not to mention society overall.
9. Evidence-based practice and boomers of color: The unique position that boomers occupy in the life cycle presents a challenge for researchers since they can be considered “middle-age” as well as older adults. The increase in longevity also calls into question those age stages that historically were also closely tied to retirement age. The unique position of boomers, in turn, has been made that much more challenging because this cohort, as countless number of scholars have argued, is unlike any generation that preceded them and has a sizable portion that is of color. Consequently, any effort at developing interventions founded on evidence-based results must take into account the unique cultural and linguistic background of this population, as covered in
chapter 10.
The cultural viewpoint of boomer and older adult is rarely taken into account in examining the role of age in self- and community perceptions. How does the cultural heritage of the boomer influence how they, and others, view them, particularly their potential contributions to the well-being of families and communities? In essence, entering “boomerhood” cannot be solely based upon chronological age, although in this society it is.
Evidenced-based practice, as a consequence, necessitates assuming a more nuanced approach, and sensitivity, in order to capture the role that culturally-based values play in shaping help-seeking patterns and reactions to social interventions. Such an approach, although widely acknowledged, necessitates having the funding and time to carry out a carefully planned evaluation. A broad-stroke approach, so to speak, cannot provide the findings that are necessary to make intervention meaningful.
10. Age warfare, class warfare, race warfare: There is little disputing that we live in a nation accustomed to all kinds of warfare. However, bringing age, class, and race to the battlefield, so to speak, is a new form of warfare. Unfortunately, that is where we are headed as a nation. The intersection of these three demographic factors presents what is arguably one of the biggest challenges this country is facing, with terrorism taking a distinct second in the next decade.
Tankersley’s (2012) article, titled “Generational Warfare: The Case Against Parasitic Baby Boomers,” in the National Journal highlights why a warfare metaphor is not hyperbole. Berger (2010), too, issues a call out to baby boomer haters: “Self-loathing is a Boomer characteristic, and Boomer bashing a sport for all the other generations. Boomers, in fact, are both scapegoat and piñata, the cause of all misery which is relieved only by swarming them with blows using a very big stick.”
The popularity of metaphors, particularly the use of the silver tsunami, crystalizes the role of language in shaping opinions and perspectives. Barusch provides an important insight into the use of the silver tsunami metaphor: “In the Pacific we have experience with tsunamis: great walls of water that destroy or displace everything in their path and then recede, leaving nothing behind but rubble, salty mud, and broken lives. There’s nothing human about a tsunami. It’s a nasty metaphor for older adults” (Barusch, 2013, p. 181). Andrea Charise (2012) points out that “‘it testifies to the barely conscious figurative language that serves to construct perceptions of an aging population’—inaccurate, damaging perceptions, at that.”
It becomes critical for helping professions to weigh in on the debate and not allow economics and politicians to control the discourse. We are in a propitious position to put faces and stories to those boomers who are most vulnerable and faceless in this debate. This country has historically viewed older adults with a degree of respect. However, allowing boomers to be relegated to a catchphrase, slogan, or a line on a bumper sticker does a serious injustice to the lives of millions of individuals who have sacrificed over their lifetimes. Our effectiveness as helping professions, as individuals, or through our national organizations must be mobilized to act. Scapegoating one generation undermines our democratic principles and, as a result, weakens the nation.
11. What role is there for social work education? It would be irresponsible not to turn attention to the role that departments and schools of social work can play in advancing social justice and boomers of color. Content related to boomers of color, however, should not be relegated to courses on gerontology. This cohort must be addressed across the curriculum to help ensure that we as a profession can play a leadership role in shaping services and policies that are culturally competent and social justice inspired. Quite frankly, this charge must be viewed as an opportunity to help other professions form partnerships and join in collaborative efforts at reaching and engaging boomers and building upon boomer assets.
A failure of social work education to prepare the next generation of social workers in the field of gerontology will effectively marginalize the profession and its potential influence in this ever growing field of practice. It has, however, disastrous consequences for this nation’s most marginalized groups, and we can certainly include low-income boomers of color in this category. These boomers are part of existing families and communities. Consequently, a socioecological perspective will uncover numerous intended and unintended consequences from these two spheres of influence.
The next decade promises to be a highly tumultuous time in this country as the ranks of older adults and retirees gather momentum and their increased presence becomes an even hotter economic and political issue. The influence of demographics is well understood and wields great significance from an economic, political, social, and cultural perspective. Although many can argue that demography is not destiny, it surely is arduous to argue that demography has nothing to do with the future of a country.
Social work and other helping professions will not have the “luxury” to sit on the sidelines. We will have to enter the political arena to advocate for social justice for marginalized older adults as national debt and deficits are debated and elected officials stake their position in either a deficit or asset perspective. The fate of the country hangs in the balance, and we as a profession must weigh in on the outcome.