Age Discrimination Made America Great
Why Your Resume Ain’t the Problem. America’s Amnesia Is
You Thought I Was About To Say Something Noble, Didn’t You?
You thought I was gonna open this post with a heartfelt sermon about the evils of age discrimination, didn’t you?
Nah.
You already know that story. I’d be preaching to the choir and the choir don’t cut checks.
Truth is, age discrimination didn’t undermine America.
It built it.
Just like slavery. Just like genocide. Just like tossing folks aside once they’ve outlived their “utility.”
We don’t just discard the elders, nah, we call it progress.
Moral indignation got nothing to do with it.
This ain’t about fairness.
It’s about the game and the brutal math of a culture that sees age as inefficiency, memory as dead weight, and wisdom as something to “consult” right before budget season.
We are not a country.
We are a startup with nukes.
I saw it up close when someone I know who is brilliant, experienced, talented asked me to look over their résumé.
This individual used to run syndicated radio shows, manage entire operations, and produce sound that raised a generation of listeners. They’re sharp. Dependable. Gifted.
And my first thought?
You’re cooked.
Not because they aren’t capable.
Because the world this person has trained for no longer exists.
The Ghost in the Résumé
This person I spoke about was the kind of professional every team needs but rarely recognizes and notsome amateur who “dabbled” in media.
They ran it.
Live radio. Syndicated programming. Voiceovers. Guest coordination. Scripting. Emergency broadcast coverage. A velvet voice, technical precision, and hustle for days.
This person was the voice of the station, literally.
They produced a nationally syndicated kids’ show back when you had to know how to keep a signal alive and the vibe flowing in real time. No second takes. No Descript. No AI-generated cleanup. Just skill.
So when they asked me to review their résumé, I braced myself.
And what I saw?
It wasn’t bad.
It was worse.
It was invisible.
⸻
The Ghost Protocol
It listed:
• Windows XP
• FORTRAN and COBOL
• A long list of job duties but no outcomes
• No keywords, no relevance to modern workflows
• No mention of podcasting, editing software, content calendars, or brand voice
It was honest, yes.
But in the age of algorithmic gatekeeping, it was unreadable. Not because of bad grammar but because it spoke a language the job market has long forgotten.
The résumé didn’t tell a story.
It told a eulogy.
Who This Person’s Really Competing With
Not 22-year-olds.
Not even 32-year-olds.
They are competing with:
• ChatGPT written cover letters
• AI-optimized résumé templates
• LinkedIn influencers with 60k followers and no real experience
• Podcast producers who’ve never done live anything but know how to code
• Hiring managers who scan for keywords, not wisdom
This individual’s trying to get back into a world that automated her out before they knew automation was coming.
And Yet Still They Ain’t Done
I rewrote their résumé.
We stripped it down, restructured it, and recoded their brilliance in a language the bots could understand.
We didn’t lie.
We translated.
Now they are:
• A content operations specialist
• A voice branding strategist
• A podcast launch consultant
• A community-focused media producer
They always were.
This person just didn’t know that’s what they were calling it now.
⸻
The tragedy isn’t that this talented person failed.
The tragedy is that they succeeded, just in a format the system stopped reading.
The Longer You Resist Change, The More Invisible You Become
Invisibility doesn’t happen all at once.
It creeps.
First, you don’t update your résumé because you’re still proud of what you used to do.
Then, you don’t learn the new software because “they’ll teach me on the job.”
Then, you don’t join the platform because it feels performative or “not your thing.”
Then, you stop asking questions because you don’t want to seem out of touch.
By the time you realize the world has moved on?
You’re a ghost.
Not because you’re not talented.
Not because you didn’t contribute.
But because your brilliance hasn’t been translated into the current dialect.
⸻
The Algorithm Has No Memory
If your story can’t be:
• Scanned
• Sorted
• Indexed
• Key-worded
• Or recommended by an algorithm…
Then it doesn’t exist.
That person’s resume wasn’t invisible because it lacked merit.
It was invisible because it lacked metadata.
We built a world that doesn’t recognize wisdom unless it comes with hashtags, high engagement, and a PDF portfolio with Canva graphics.
And the cost of that isn’t just personal.
It’s cultural extinction.
⸻
This Is Bigger Than Any One Resume Critique
This is what happens when the operating system of your society gets upgraded—and no one gives you the patch notes.
In America, we don’t just forget people.
We call their forgetting innovation.
We replace elders with interns, call it “fresh thinking,”
Replace memory with analytics, call it “data-driven,”
Replace wisdom with virality, and call it “reach.”
⸻
But Here’s the Thing:
Invisibility is not death.
It’s the moment before you decide what to do next.
If you’ve got a resume that’s out of touch you don’t need to beg for visibility.
You need to build your own signal.
The people who created the Blues didn’t start with a résumé.
They started with a need.
They played in brothels and basements because nobody else would give them a stage.
And what they created was so undeniable, the world had to listen.
The Plessy Parallel: From Segregation to Sound
My anonymous broadcast professional is not the first Black professional to get ghosted by the system.
In fact, they’re standing at the same kind of crossroads our people faced back in 1896, when the Supreme Court delivered that infamous verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson legalizing segregation and telling an entire race of people: “You don’t belong.”
That moment didn’t just break the law, it broke the illusion.
Especially for the Creoles of New Orleans who were the lighter-skinned, French-speaking, class-straddling Black folks who genuinely believed that education, manners, and property would protect them from the boot.
They got their answer.
And so did the darker-skinned freedmen who had just clawed their way out of slavery.
The court drew a red line through the entire Black community and said: “All y’all—out.”
⸻
The Birth of the Blues
But what happened next wasn’t submission.
It wasn’t respectability.
It wasn’t a résumé rewrite.
It was a musical rebellion.
Those exiled musicians who depended on the income they made from playing for well to do wealthy white patrons didn’t march on Washington.
They grabbed their horns, put their differences and prejudices aside that they had with their darker skinned brothers and sat in brothels, saloons, and smoky back rooms, and started playing sounds together nobody could ignore.
Not European.
Not respectable.
Not polished.
Raw. Improvised. Black. Alive.
They didn’t wait to be accepted into the mainstream.
They became the mainstream.
⸻
Your Plessy Moment
Your not in court.
But you with your outdated resume are in the same kind of room being told by polite rejections, unread emails, and bot-filtered job listings that they no longer belong.
Your knowledge doesn’t count.
Your voice isn’t needed.
Your time is up.
But that’s a lie.
It’s not your time that’s expired.
It’s the container that got too small for your evolution.
Just like the musicians of New Orleans, you have a choice:
Wait for recognition—or start making noise they can’t ignore.
And today? That noise might not be jazz.
It might be:
• A Substack with voice memos.
• A podcast telling real stories about aging, work, and reinvention.
• A media service that helps younger creators not fumble their first 10 episodes.
⸻
The Lesson Is the Same
When a system stops seeing you—don’t shrink.
Get louder.
The Hustle Still Matters
So no—I’m not telling you to drop everything and launch a podcast just for the art of it.
I’m saying:
You don’t need permission to get paid for your wisdom.
You need:
A one-minute voice demo
A simple landing page (Wix, Carrd, or even a pinned LinkedIn post)
Three packages: Audio cleanup, content coaching, and podcast production strategy
Ten DMs a week to younger creators and orgs who are talented—but disorganized
One powerful line:
“I’ve produced national radio. Let me make your podcast sound like it.”
And just like that, My broadcast professional is not unemployed.
They are unleashed.
The Reality Check That Sets You Free
“But I still need a job” is real.
But it doesn’t mean you need that job.
It means you need a way to translate your worth into income—today.
And in 2025, that means strategy, signal, and speed.
Not credentials.
Memory Isn’t Just Personal—It’s Geopolitical
America doesn’t just forget its elders.
It forgets everything.
And while we’ve convinced ourselves that this makes us agile, innovative, and future-focused, the rest of the world sees it for what it is:
A dangerous kind of cultural brain damage.
That resume story is domestic, yes. But it echoes something deeper, something that shows up in our foreign policy, our diplomacy, and our imperial blind spots.
Because the nations we now struggle to understand?
They remember.
🇨🇳
China remembers
The opium wars.
Western troops marching through the Forbidden City.
American Marines in field hats looking like cowboy Stetsons posing in front of the palaces of dynasties older than our Constitution.
We call them paranoid.
They call it historical pattern recognition.
🇯🇵
Japan remembers
World War I.
When they tried to join the League of Nations and were told,
“Nah—you’re not white enough.”
So they industrialized with a vengeance, only to have two cities vaporized by nukes.
Today, their society reveres elders, and still bows, literally, to lineage.
Meanwhile, we push 55-year-olds into early retirement and call it “restructuring.”
🇮🇷
Iran remembers
The CIA-backed coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh for daring to nationalize oil.
We installed the Shah.
They’ve never forgotten it.
We did.
Our textbooks barely mention it.
And when they look at us?
They don’t see democracy.
They see a country that can’t remember five years ago telling them how to shape the next fifty.
This Is the Real Divide
America exports apps, guns, and vibes.
But what it doesn’t export is memory.
We sell “disruption” like it’s salvation.
We treat tradition like a liability.
We delete history like clearing browser tabs.
And then we wonder why countries like China, Japan, Iran and hell, even Canada these days don’t trust us with the future.
Because we don’t value elders.
And they know: a nation that doesn’t respect its own ancestors can’t be trusted with anyone’s children.
The Resume Test
So when I say that broadcast professional got ghosted by their industry?
It’s not just a job market failure.
It’s a foreign policy preview.
Because a nation that forgets its Black radio producers is the same nation that forgets how it built empires on other people’s backs.
It’s all connected.
The résumé and the regime are built on the same software: short-term memory loss in service of profit.
The Fourth Turning Is Here
If you’ve been rocking with me since my piece Every Generation Kills Its Parents, then you already know the playbook.
Historian Neil Howe called it.
The Fourth Turning is the moment in every cycle when institutions crumble, conflict rises, and the old world starts to rot in real time.
It’s when:
Old systems lose legitimacy
Young people start rejecting inherited values
The gap between memory and momentum gets violent
We’re not heading into the Fourth Turning.
We’re in it.
And the evidence isn’t just in the news cycle.
It’s in résumés like the one I mentioned.
The Revolution Will Not Be HR-Approved
The Fourth Turning doesn’t always come with tanks.
Sometimes it shows up in ghosted job apps, forgotten elders, and entire industries being gutted by the very tools they once celebrated.
That broadcast professional is not a casualty.
They are a canary.
They are what happens when a generation is told:
“Thanks for everything. We’ll take it from here.”
But the joke is, the new kids don’t actually know what “it” is.
They’ve got the mic.
But no soundcheck.
No grounding.
No institutional memory.
So they turn to AI.
And AI turns to the past.
But the past is gone.
Because we buried it.
Because we buried people like that broadcast professional.
Every Generation Kills Its Parents
Not always with bullets.
Sometimes with upgrades.
We called the radio old.
Then podcasting came along.
Now even podcasting is being AI-cloned and SEO-churned into oblivion.
But while we’re over here throwing out elders, other cultures are consulting theirs.
In Japan, you become a national treasure in your 70s.
In Korea, the eldest speaks first.
In Iran, the old men run the country—and have been playing chess with empires longer than our tech bros have been alive.
Meanwhile, America just asked that broadcasting pro to shorten their résumé to one page and stop using the word “radio.”
The Turning Always Turns Back
The genius of the Fourth Turning isn’t the collapse.
It’s what happens after.
Rebuilding.
Renewal.
A new order that remembers why the old one failed.
But that only works if the people who remember are still around and still willing to speak.
My broadcasting pro is not a footnote.
They are the source code.
Final Call: The Blues Ain’t Dead. It’s Digital Now
My broadcasting pro doesn’t need a résumé.
They needs a mic.
A stream key.
And a strategy.
They don’t need LinkedIn endorsements from people who barely remember his or her name.
They need clients.
They need listeners.
They need a space where their wisdom gets paid in full.
Because the Blues didn’t die.
It just changed format.
It went from saloons to wax,
From wax to radio,
From radio to samples,
From samples to Spotify.
And now?
Now it’s sitting in an inbox full of unread résumés, waiting to be reborn by someone who remembers the sound of survival.
This Is the Moment We Flip the Script
Don’t wait to be seen.
Get loud.
Get found.
Make the system feel your absence before it earns your presence again.
This world doesn’t reward wisdom freely.
You have to invoice the algorithm.
You have to price your memory.
You have to become so undeniable, the bots start copying you.
If You’re That Broadcast Professional We Keep Talking About
Here’s your move:
Start small. Offer one free episode cleanup to a young podcaster with promise.
Post a 60-second voice memo on Substack titled: “I Used to Run This Mic. Here’s What I Hear Now.”
DM someone half your age and say, “Let me help you sound like you have a team.”
Keep receipts.
Stack testimonials.
Scale.
And when you walk into the next interview if you even need one—make sure you’re not asking for a seat at the table.
Bring your own mic.
Final Words
That person is not a relic.
They are a remix.
A walking masterclass in calm under pressure, brand voice development, live production, and audio soul.
And if the world won’t recognize them?
Then maybe the world ain’t the audience.
Maybe the future that my broadcast professional deserves isn’t waiting in an inbox.
Maybe it’s waiting on air.
You’re not too old.
You’re not out of date.
You’re just ahead of schedule and stuck in the wrong format.
The mic is still on.
Pick it up.