The Wisdom We Lost When We Stopped Listening to Elders

speaker-0 (00:03.982)
Hey folks, welcome back. Today we have Raymond Jetson, who is focused on Aging While Black. I’ll ask Raymond to explain himself a little bit further and who he is and what he does. But I wanted to explain a bit about why I have Raymond on. I was looking at all the guests I have had and I noticed that I had predominantly women. Then when I was looking a little bit closer, I realized they were

virtually all white. I didn’t have much distinction in terms of perspectives on aging. So I reach out to Raymond and I thought, here’s a gentleman that can give us a good perspective on other ways of aging, other things that are happening when we age. Raymond, thanks for joining us. It always sounds better coming from somebody else. So why don’t you tell us about who you are and what you do?

speaker-1 (01:04.094)
Thank you very much, Neil. I am grateful for the invitation. And in 2026, particularly in America, but I think in the United States, but I think worldwide, the choice of the word distinction rather than diversity is an interesting one because all of a sudden,

Or maybe not all of a sudden, but words have certainly become loaded with reaction from people. I am Raymond Jetson, as you shared. I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the United States. I have been involved in public life for now 43 years in a number of different venues.

As I approached my 55th birthday, I became keenly aware of the issue of age because my father died at 55. And I did not realize how young he was until I was literally on the eve of my 55th birthday. And it began to become an area of intrigue for me. And so I started playing in aging spaces, if you will.

I was invited to participate in the inaugural cohort of the Encore Public Voices Fellowship, which was this marriage of an entity focused on second careers with one focus on public voice. And I was in the initial cohort, started thinking about what thought leadership and aging looked like.

ultimately became a member of the board of Encore, was selected as one of the purpose prize winners for AARP. And so I found myself in the midst of this whole aging conversation that became this rising crescendo.

speaker-1 (03:24.152)
But it became really apparent to me that there was a part of the conversation missing, Neil, because, and here’s the headline of Aging While Black, aging in the United States is not a racial neutral experience. Not everybody experiences aging in the same way. And that was a missing part of the conversation. And so in February of 2023,

I, along with my partner, Kelly Johnson Graves, launched Aging While Black. And I will share with you that at that point, having been in public life for 40 years, nothing prepared me in those 40 years for the response to the conversation that we started around Aging While Black, yet everything that I’d done.

in those 40 years prepared me for the response to the launch of Aging While Black.

speaker-0 (04:27.98)
When did you start the aging of wild black?

speaker-1 (04:31.49)
February of is when we launched. Now, prior to that, as I said, I’d been in public life for 40 years. I’d been an elected official. I served in state government here in Louisiana. I was the Deputy Secretary for our Department of Health and Hospitals. I led a

nonprofit in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that our governor started, focused on displaced New Orleanians. I took a two-year fellowship in advanced leadership at Harvard. I would later launch a social enterprise focused on urban neighborhoods that was called Metromorphosis.

And I was actually still quite active in metromorphosis when I started really putting my toe, if you will, in the waters of the aging conversation in the United States.

speaker-0 (05:42.51)
So to me, there’s always similarities and there’s differences with everybody’s perspectives. I’ll go into the similarities later. You had mentioned about different experiences. What were some of the different experiences that you were identifying?

speaker-1 (06:04.878)
So unfortunately for a healthy conversation in America, the distinctions were grounded in race. And if you look at recent events in America, everything about the black experience in America has been different from its inception. And so why wouldn’t it be in aging?

In mid-July of 2025, I released a book, Aging While Black, A Radical Reimagining of Aging and Race in America. And the only theory of gerontology that I lift up in the book is a theory of cumulative advantage, disadvantage. And what the theory?

espouses is that both advantage and disadvantage compound over time. And so if you start from a place of advantage, then as you move along the age continuum, that advantage increases. Likewise, and conversely, if you start from a place of disadvantage, as you move along the age continuum, that disadvantage exacerbates.

Well, in the history of the United States of America, you would be hard pressed to find a group of people who have faced systemic and societally reinforced disadvantage more than African-Americans. And so as a consequence, as I often say, when you look at the challenges that are intentionally

and have been intentionally set forth for Black people in this country, it is absolutely ludicrous to think that we would show up at old age and all of a sudden be well. When you grow up in neighborhoods that are socially engineered to be concentrations of poverty,

speaker-0 (08:15.703)
So when you

speaker-1 (08:30.84)
through redlining of neighborhoods, lack of access to capital, poor investment in education, underinvestment in other opportunities, public transportation, quality of life, access to healthy foods. mean, pick from the list of things that are important for a quality of life and opportunity.

to compete and the intentional barriers that are structurally in place and enforced in America, it is not surprising that Black people would show up in old age and be outliers in terms of chronic illness, in terms of life expectancy, in terms of lack of wealth.

in terms of having to work longer, in terms of having twice the rate of dementia as other populations. These are not things that are attributed to some deficit in Black people in America, but they are deeply rooted in the lived experience, in those.

are often referred to social drivers, social determinants of health and wellbeing. They are grounded in where you live. They’re grounded in your access to healthcare. They are grounded in a number of other factors.

speaker-0 (10:19.106)
So what I’m hearing here is the race aspect of society in the US, that impacts the individual, regardless of what the age is. But as they get older, those impacts become cumulative.

speaker-1 (10:38.295)
Yes.

speaker-0 (10:39.63)
OK. So do the same things still happen? Let me take the race aspect out. You were talking about dementia. dementia still happens. it’s twice the dementia rate from, I’ll make the assumption, the white race. What about things like how much longer or shorter is the lifespan?

of an aging black person versus an aging white person.

speaker-1 (11:14.555)
I think for women, Neil, it’s between seven and eight years. And for men, it is 10 plus.

speaker-0 (11:28.064)
One of the common themes I hear on all my various different interviews is the need for purpose. Is that still prevalent? And this is probably going to be a really stupid question, but is that still prevalent for a longer lifespan within the black population?

speaker-1 (11:51.03)
Yes. And so I mentioned, Neil, the book that I wrote, and I have a chapter in the book on the importance of purpose. And as people transition in life, that sense of purpose becomes equally, if not more critical as we transition in old age than at other stages. And so very often,

are for people who are fortunate enough to have voluntary transitions. And so I am fortunate enough that I can choose to no longer work at the regular job that I had. And I choose to now do something else with my time, being able to navigate

to a place of understanding about purpose and how that is lived out in this stage of my life is absolutely critical. But we have a colloquialism, Neil, in South Louisiana that says when you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember you came to drain the swamp. And so,

The other side of that coin is if I am 75 and I still have to go to my minimum wage job every day just to keep food in my household, it’s hard for me to engage in this important conversation about purpose. My purpose, as I understand it, is to get up and go, is to survive.

That is my purpose. And unfortunately, that is the lived experience for a disproportionate number of Black people in this country.

speaker-0 (14:05.902)
Has that changed the family dynamic aspects? One of the pillars that TTM has is around couples and family dynamics. Because when we retire or when we get older, those dynamics change. My dad is 94. I have to keep an eye on him and help him. I have kids that are in their 20s. I’m that sandwich generation. But I’m…

not as worried about the financial aspects anymore.

I remember hearing an economist say that when we moved to urban cities, what we ended up doing is having smaller families because the kids became cost centers, whereas on the farms, they were more of additional labor, that sort of thing, and everybody helped each other. Is that a sim… with the financial aspects, has that changed the family dynamics within the Black community?

speaker-1 (15:08.504)
Well, there have been a number of factors that have impacted the family dynamics, but there are, and I certainly want to make certain that my narrative is not one that is solely grounded in deficit and challenge for the Black lived experience, because that is certainly

are not the only side of the coin. There are lots of really strong and vibrant black families in the country. And even so, there are challenges with the intergenerational dynamics for lots of reasons. I join you in being a part of that sandwich generation. I am the primary caregiver for my 93-year-old mother.

I also have a 35 year old daughter who was born with developmental disabilities and a 28 year old son. And so I join you in that place of caring forward and behind at both at the same time. I think part of the challenge

in family dynamics in the US generally, but my lived experience and my focus has been particularly on black families and communities. have lost the ability or we have, yeah, we’ve lost the ability in many instances to connect intergenerationally and to have intergenerational conversations and dialogues.

I grew up next door to my great grandparents and I lived on a street that one half of the block was my family. Some of my richest memories are sitting on my great grandparents front porch listening to them talk about life and sharing what I didn’t realize.

speaker-1 (17:34.548)
at the point was amazing wisdom. I share like many folks, it’s amazing the older I get how wiser they become in the things that they shared. But that dynamic, that social structure has changed in very significant ways. And I think, I shared the subtitle of the book,

was a radical reimagining of aging and race. And part of the radical reimagined aging construct that I offer is that aging, particularly, but not exclusively for Black families in the US, cannot be a discussion simply about people who have reached a particular chronological milestone.

And so you are over the age of 60 or you are over the age of 65. And so now let’s talk about what aging means for you. There’s a brilliant woman in Atlanta in state of Georgia who said to me, young man, aging is a verb. We are all doing it. And the reality is I am aging at 25 and at 75.

It’s just the framing of aging, the prevailing narrative is that it focuses a lot more on me at 75 than it does at 25. And what I put forward in the book is that aging has to be an across generations construct. The term that we have coined at Aging While Black is collective longevity.

that we have to begin to capitalize on the strengths and the abilities and the contributions of every generation so that we all age well, but the oldest among us age very well. And so I think that that is an important shift that has to take place.

speaker-0 (19:49.294)
That’s an interesting observation because it’s something that I hear from every one of my guests is that the term retirement should go away. That we really need to rethink the stages in our life. That they’re not start stop, they’re phases. They come and go as we grow older.

speaker-1 (20:13.706)
I think the term that you use that is very helpful in understanding this conversation, in my opinion, is transitions. We transition through the life course. And there are these hard starts and stops.

except in rare instances due to factors usually beyond our control, they aren’t. But I have a very dear friend of mine who is a board member of Aging While Black who after 40 years in federal government focused on enhancing opportunities for older Americans.

left the federal government and his term is that I’ve not retired, I’ve rewired. And I think that is certainly what more and more people are doing in the times that we find ourselves in, either out of personal choice,

just the way people navigate life or necessity. You know, people move on to other things and other ways. For those of us who are really, really fortunate, it is an expression of living out that purpose in a different way.

speaker-0 (22:02.542)
Talk to me about ageism in your aspect, because you’re already dealing with a societal impact with regards to racism. You pile on top of that ageism, or what happens there?

speaker-1 (22:19.566)
Well, so I will add two things to that, to the ageism or to the racism. And it is ageism and then the matter of gender that particularly plays out in black communities. so there’s so much

in American life and particularly in the rampant world of social media that compounds and reinforces an extremely ageist culture. You know, from the, you know, boomer get out of the way narrative that is so prevalent.

in social media to older adults despising or dismissing the skills, talents, and abilities that emerging generations bring to the table, you know, unfortunately with the leadership of this country and the advanced age of…

whether it was Joe Biden or the now current president or so many members of the United States Congress being over a certain age. You know, people confuse competency with age. And so rather than saying this person is no longer competent to do the job, the proxy for it becomes they are too old.

And there are lots of comments to that. But the ageism is so, you know, baked in the culture. I was having a conversation with a younger colleague of mine who was complaining about a very real for them lived experience. And before I knew it, my comment was,

speaker-1 (24:42.198)
You are too young to be red. You don’t know anything about that. Let me tell you. And I caught myself and fortunately they hoked back a bit to call attention that I was being very ageist in dismissing the reality of their lived experience. And so I think in so many ways it’s baked into our culture and reinforced by the media.

social and otherwise. And so it adds to it. But the other thing that I write about, and I think that it’s important to note in this matter of aging while Black, is when you add gender to that. I have a very dear friend of mine, Elizabeth White, who lives in Washington, D.C. Elizabeth wrote a book,

that was entitled 55 unemployed and faking normal. And she talked about during a downturn in the economy, losing her job at the age of 55 and having to battle what scholars, black scholars before me have described as the

triple threat of being black, older, and female in America. I refer to it as a toxic group. Now, Elizabeth graduated from Johns Hopkins, had an MBA from Harvard, and still found herself challenged to find

employment opportunities commensurate with the credentials and the experiences that she brought to the table. And, you know, I’m not tongue-in-cheek writing the book. Can you imagine what it would be like to be older, Black and female?

speaker-1 (27:02.898)
and not have an MBA from Harvard and not have graduated from Johns Hopkins and not have worked for the World Bank and done some of the other things that this woman has done. so ageism, racism, sexism can make life really challenging. You look at what happened in the American government during the

the infamous Doge days when the chainsaw was taken to government, the most impacted group were black women. In excess of 400,000 black women lost their jobs, and many of them have been unable. And the federal government was a gateway

to middle class living in this country. And so if you were able to get a job with the federal government, you stood a greater than average chance of being able to live a reasonable facsimile of a middle class life. You would be able to retire and you’d have some stability in life. Well, that apple cart has been totally upended.

And so you have not only that which is rooted in race, because you would be hard-fresh. I would be hard-fresh to accept an argument that says that it is mere happenstance that the largest group of people impacted by the reductions in federal government were Black women.

that that was not something that at best could have been anticipated and at worst was intentional. And so once again, these are people, many of whom have worked with federal government for many years. And so now they find themselves as they are aging and reaching a point in life where they anticipated some modicum of stability,

speaker-1 (29:28.982)
that that’s been totally pulled from under them.

speaker-0 (29:32.002)
very first person I ever interviewed was Paul Tasner. He’s in Southern California. He was forced into retirement at age 64. He lost his job. But because of where he lives and he wasn’t ready to retire, he figured, okay, I’m going to start a business. It took him two years and then in 66, he started a business that he’s still now at age 80 running and working with his son.

Do you see that happening within the black community as well?

speaker-1 (30:06.922)
Yes, yes. mean, some of the most entrepreneurial and industrious people I know are Black women. And so, yes, there are a number of entrepreneurial efforts, small businesses, collaborative efforts that are emerging from this. But here, Neil, is where

this matter of race complicates things. Because when you look at the lack of access to capital to start businesses, particularly for black people broadly, black women with a greater prevalence and complicate that by being a bit older in age, it becomes a serious quagmire.

to navigate. And so yes, there are these efforts, but it’s not an accident that many of the entrepreneurs who are over the age of 50, particularly those who are black, launch their businesses on their credit cards.

because they are challenged to walk into a bank and get a small business loan with as greater consistency as others are in this country.

speaker-0 (31:46.668)
Yeah, no, that’s a common thread I’ve heard from anybody when I’m talking about the entrepreneurship side of things is because of the age, there’s a higher risk from those that have capital. So you end up bootstrapping a lot more for the startup of business and that sort of thing. You add, layer in other disadvantages, feminism.

racism, that sort of thing. And all of sudden you’re just adding another layer of risk to all these various different things.

speaker-1 (32:19.404)
You are adding a layer, another layer of risk, certainly in the eyes of those who get to make decisions as to whether you will actually be able to secure the capital necessary to fund your effort.

speaker-0 (32:42.702)
We started off with focusing on the negatives, that sort of stuff. You had indicated that you didn’t want to just indicate all the bad areas, that there were some real strengths. What are some of those areas that you were thinking about?

speaker-1 (33:00.142)
So when you consider the structural and societally reinforced barriers that are part of the very DNA of the United States of America, I think we have to laud the fortitude of generations who have been able to… My mom is 93. My mom moved into…

her adult life during the midst of Jim Crow and a segregated style. My mother, as I write in the book, was not able to pursue her chosen profession as a teacher in our community because the school systems were segregated.

you know, separate and totally unequal. And there were only so many teaching slots in the black system. And so my mom, for the first couple of years of her teaching career, literally had to drive to a neighboring community where there was an available opportunity to teach. And so for the first, you know, few years of my life,

My mom would leave home on Sunday evening with her colleague to drive to the school system, to the town where she taught and come back home on Friday evenings. And I would spend the day, I spend the nights with my great grandparents because my father was a meat cutter who got up very early in the morning to go to work. When my mom was able to finally get a job,

in our system, it was not very long when integration happened that my mom was plucked from her historically black school and placed in the blue ribbon magnet high school in our city because she had quickly garnered a reputation as one of the best teachers in our city. Here’s the challenge, Neil.

speaker-1 (35:27.806)
Even though my mom was an exceptional lauded, celebrated, awarded teacher, when she retired, her retirement benefits, her insurance, her payments, all of that was impacted by the fact that she didn’t start in our system when she was able to, when she should have been able to.

And so, you know, my mom was an exceptional teacher and in spite of the start that she got, in spite of the hurdles she had to overcome, in spite of the scrutiny that was before us, before her, clearly along with her partner, she and the two Marys, my mom is Mary Jensen, her partner in teaching was Mary Smith, they literally taught together for 33 years.

and were recognized as these amazing teachers. They are stories after stories after stories. I mentioned my great grandparents. Neither of my great grandparents could read or write. It was against the law when they were children in the segregated South for them to learn to read or write. They both signed their names with an X, but they brought 12 children in this world, all of whom became

productive citizens, all of whom raised their own families, bought houses, graduated from schools, got jobs, and lived these wonderful lives, not free of challenge, but with this thing inside of them, this fortitude and this optimism that I can make life

better. My great grandparents are merely avatars for thousands of Black elders across this country who in the face of challenge and difficulty have managed to maintain this optimism and to go forward. I mean, when you think of the realities of Jim Crow South,

speaker-1 (37:55.518)
and all of the other things that have existed in this country, the fact that Black people have been able to achieve, the fact that we have been able to raise families, to graduate colleges, to run businesses, to be elected president, to do all of these things.

I think it is a testament to the assets, to the very nature and character of a people. And all of that is going to be called upon again as we find the very real reoccurring manifestations of efforts to devalue

and hamper just the access to opportunity that Black people face in this country.

speaker-0 (38:57.804)
Is it getting better? This is a very short question, but there’s probably a much deeper answer. Is it?

speaker-1 (39:06.463)
speaker-1 (39:10.114)
You know, we have a president.

who defines greatness for America in…

speaker-1 (39:30.594)
the dismissal or disintegrating of opportunity for Black and Brown people. We have a Supreme Court.

that has in a matter of years.

totally eliminated the Voting Rights Act. I grew up in a family where my great uncle was one of the first three people in my community to register to vote as a black person. And Neal, we’re not talking about 100 years ago. You know, we’re literally

talking within my lifetime, basically. And so…

speaker-1 (40:30.516)
No, it’s not getting better. It’s getting abjectly worse in this time. And when you have every level of government, you have an executive branch that has absolutely no checks, no balances, and is able to put forward public policy via tweet that

that disembowels people of their very sense of being. And you have a Congress that on its best days does nothing and on its worst days lends credence to it. And a final stop in a Supreme Court that I believe will go down in history as one of the worst

in the 250 years of this not yet United States of America, it’s hard.

to look around you and say that it is getting better in any way.

speaker-0 (41:53.678)
I’m going to give you what I see as a pattern. And it’s a common pattern across a lot of different areas. And then I want to try and pull it back to the retirement and the older side of things. Because we kind of slipped away from that core conversation. But one of the things I’ve noticed in a number of things is what I call that battle of the bulge. If you remember in World War II,

the Allies were pushing the German forces back. And then in the period of, I think it was early 44, they did the concentrated pushback in one area, which caused the Allies to step back, but then had to reinforce. And that pushed it away. I’ve noticed, and I’m not just talking about racism, I’m talking about in all areas where…

pattern seems to be that things are moving forward and then the existing forces of whatever area, racism, ageism, different cultural aspects, push back and push back hard. And there’s a step back before the society again pushes forward and moves forward. I would suggest that it’s going to be different timeframes and amount of time and that sort of thing.

I would suggest I’m seeing that as well, where you had that steady progression moving forward. The US had the Voting Rights Act. And by the way, I’m Canadian, so if I’m getting the terms wrong, my apologies.

speaker-1 (43:35.444)
No worries.

speaker-0 (43:37.516)
The pushback from the old ways of doing things is where we are right now. But I’m also starting to see a reinvigoration of society as it pushes back against that pushback, that battle of the bulge type thing.

speaker-1 (43:50.986)
I would wholeheartedly agree with you, Arneal, that there is an emerging…

community of people who are saying that this is not acceptable. I can only hope that that continues to grow. What I would share that is particularly problematic in the present is that that emerging community does not control the levers of power. And so it’s that progression.

of being able to influence those levers of power to change things. I also would like to go back for just a moment to something that you said and grounded in what I believe is absolutely critical to this idea of aging while black. Your comment was,

We want to get back to the retirement conversation because we’ve kind of moved away from that for a bit. I would argue that what we have talked about is exactly what complicates aging while black in America. As a 70 year old man, don’t have the luxury of focusing in simply on

what this stage of my life and how I will live out my purpose in years to come when I have just had my voice as a citizen muted by the highest court in my land. Not because I’m 70 years old, but because I’m Black. The maps for representation that are being argued

speaker-1 (45:59.238)
in my state, which the Supreme Court decision spoke directly to, are not being argued based upon how is this impacting older Louisiana? The question is, will there be one seat where Black people actually have an opportunity to elect someone of their choosing, or will there be only one out of six?

even though we make up a third of the state. That’s a part of my lived experience as a 17 year old. I sat on yesterday with my 93 year old mom and watched her as she watched the news and shake her head and said, I can’t believe that I’m here again at this point in my life.

That’s aging wild plague in America.

speaker-0 (47:00.654)
You know what, I could ask additional questions, but that is probably the best way of finishing this interview. That soliloquy. I always ask one last question of all my guests. If you were to give one piece of advice to whomever, what would that be?

speaker-1 (47:30.242)
Be in community. Be connected with others. Rugged individualism is greatly overrated. I think we find value when we are in community with others. And the deeper that community and the broader that community, the better off the world is.

speaker-0 (47:57.038)
Perfect. Raymond, I really appreciate the conversation. For me, it added another layer to the way I think about things. I was thinking about things just from a specific layer without understanding how it integrates into the whole. And that’s a takeaway that I’m walking away with. So thank you very much. For everybody that’s been watching this, will put in the description information about Aging While Black, about Raymond.

being able to reach out to him, that sort of thing. feel free to take a look at that and reach out. Raymond, thank you very much.

speaker-1 (48:36.514)
Thank you for the invitation and the opportunity, Neil. You be well.

speaker-0 (48:40.792)
Thank you.