Wednesday 20 April 2011

Aaron D. Neufeld- Blog #39

BLOG POST #39- Ageism

I’m not a fan of ageism. It’s the same as racism, just much less recognized. This act of prejudice or discrimination on the basis of a person’s age is insane. If a person has the right qualities for a particular task, or job, then that person should be hired. This is the same case that was made years ago when it came to hiring African American people. We’ve come far from that and we even now have a Black president of the United States. Clearly, blacks can perform duties just as well as whites. So why must we discriminate against age?

Ageism is terrible on two levels. The first is how it hurts young people. For example, myself. I can be very qualified to perform a task but because certain employers may feel that because I lack the experience in the field and because I am still in college, they will choose someone else who is older than me, who has been around the block, so to speak. However, this older person may be extremely less qualified but just because he or she is older, they’ll have the advantage.

Yet Ageism also impacts those who are older. It effected my dad. My dad worked in foreign currency in banking. The economy tanked, banks merged, and thousands of jobs were lost. My dad’s position was eliminated completely so he lost his job. Moving forward he tried to get jobs in other banks or similar industries. But my dad is fifty-five years old. Even though he knows the field like the back of his hand and has dozens of years of experience, Ageism prevents him from getting a job. Businesses assume that they need to pay older people higher salaries and prefer to save money by hiring younger. It sucks because Ageism probably greatly influences the amount of unemployment currently in our country.

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