I'm Kimberly Crenshaw, and this is Season 2 of Intersectionality Matters,

the podcast that brings intersectionality to life by exploring the hidden dimensions of today's most pressing issues,

from Say Her Name and Me Too to the War on Civil Rights and the Global Rise of Fascism.

This idea travelogue lifts up the work of leading activists, artists, and scholars

and helps listeners understand politics, the law, social movements, and even their own lives in deeper, more nuanced ways.

COVID-19 has changed everything, halting life as we know it in its tracks.

To respond to this global pandemic and to adapt to this new way of life, we're doing things a bit more DIY than usual. We're not in the studio and we're dispersed

all over the country, but we did want to respond to the urgent need for information, bringing to

you the voices of some of the leading experts to help us grapple with the new and not so new

dimensions of this crisis.

Ageism is one of those isms that impacts all of us at some point, but oddly enough, it's one that most people don't really think about.

And when I've thought about it myself, I've thought about moments in my family's life, my mother's life, in which I very much felt that her skills and her authority in her job were being undermined because she was perceived as an older teacher as opposed to someone that had 40 years of expertise and had many generations of students that she'd successfully

mentored. And I've seen ageism play out in medical settings. I've seen it play out even in death

when unknown causes of the death of older people don't prompt any desire to actually find out what

happened because after all, you know, they're older. I think though, having seen and heard how

ageism is playing out in this moment in quips that suggests, for example, that COVID is a baby boomer remover.

I suspect that some people were probably thinking about one who lives in the White House

or one who's running for president.

What it definitely reflects is the failure to recognize that those baby boomers and older who are most at risk

are those who are people of color, those who have worked their entire lives for other people

and retire without benefits or without housing security to actually be able to shelter in place safely.

When we use these frames that denigrate one part of our population,

...