Remembering and Celebrating the Work of Richard Farson, Radical Youth Liberationist and Author of Birthrights: A Bill of Rights for Children

   June 13, 2018 marked the one year anniversary of the death of the psychologist and author Richard Farson, the radical youth liberationist writer behind the 1974 classic of youth rights theory, Birthrights: A Bill of Rights for Children. He was ninety years old when he died in La Jolla, California. I would urge every single person concerned with the rights and liberation of young people to read Birthrights if they have not already done so. It is the first book on youth liberation theory that I ever read and it is in no way an overstatement to say that doing so dramatically changed the course of my life. It is to this day the best book ever written about the oppression of young people and how our society might do better by them. There is no other single volume which provides a fuller articulation of youth liberationist grievances, principles, values, and hopes for the future. It is both extremely accessible in its language and format and yet highly theoretically substantive and sophisticated, a rare combination in theoretical work on almost any topic.

   I have been thinking a lot about Farson and Birthrights in particular these days as I have recently begun work on my own book on the topic of youth rights and liberation. Birthrights was published during an era in American social and cultural history in which fairly radical notions in reference to the rights of young people were taken far more seriously than they were today by intellectuals and activists and yet, the more I reflect upon the conditions of American society at this present moment, the more I feel that the time is ripe for a second wave of radical youth liberationist writing, theorizing, and activism. There is no better encapsulation of the first wave of youth liberationist theory than Birthrights and as such, it provides those of us charged with ushering in a second wave of youth liberationist activism and theorizing with a wonderful legacy upon which to build. We are trailblazers, yes, but we are also part of a transgenerational lineage of radical youth liberationist thinkers, writers, and doers. It is important not to forget that.

   A good deal of what makes Birthrights so powerful and convincing is that Farson saw youth oppression both in its specificity and in its totality. He was able to see how youth subordination within the family, compulsory education, legal age restrictions, the juvenile justice system, and oppressive, patronizing, and paternalistic attitudes towards young people, to name just a few major areas of concern in reference to youth subjugation about which he wrote in Birthrights, were both serious and unique problems in their own right and also how they worked together as part of an interlocking system of force and coercion designed to keep young people, in Farson's own words, "incapacitated, oppressed, and abused." Farson's eye for both specificity as well as the panoramic view of youth oppression (and what might be done to remedy the situation) has been highly influential for me in reference to my own writing on youth liberation and has guided me in terms of how I approach the structure of the book that I am currently at work on regarding youth rights issues.

   Another important element of Farson's analysis was his focus on intersectionality long before the critical race theorist and legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw formally coined the term in the 1990s. Throughout Birthrights, Farson makes reference to the struggles of various groups within American society - women, men, prisoners, racial and ethnic minorities, disabled people, sexual minorities, poor people, elders. He sees how young people belonging to more than one marginalized group are impacted by multiple axes of oppression. He also sees how the struggles of groups other than young people may intersect with young peoples' own struggles.

   Finally, Richard Farson brilliantly understood that youth oppression is not just a product of laws and customs, although it is indeed a product of those forces. He also had a special sensitivity to and gift for describing the ways in which ageist attitudes impacted how adults saw young people and ultimately how young people came to conceptualize themselves. This is evident when Farson discusses the way that so-called "child prodigies" are in a certain important sense pathologized in contemporary American society, how youth sexuality is always only understood against the backdrop of deviance, how ageist attitudes towards young people infiltrate and impact the ostensibly scientific work done to study youth, and how adult preferences for children who are cute, obedient, quiet, docile, and apolitical reflect deep antipathy towards young people as individuals and their political interests as a class.

   As a second wave youth liberationist, I am so grateful for the gifts that Richard Farson provided to us via his work as a first wave youth liberationist. I pray that he rests in both peace and power and that his memory is forever for a blessing. Perhaps most importantly for those of us interested in continuing his youth liberationist work, I pray that we take his passing as a sign of a charge to keep in reference to continuing the work for youth rights and liberation that that first wave of youth liberationists began back in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It's time for a second wave. I think we're up to it and I think that we're incredibly fortunate to have Richard Farson's brilliant work to guide us along the way.

Richard Farson: 1926-2017.

     

Youth Rights 101: Why I Focus on Youth (Hint: They're Our Society's Most Oppressed Subject Class)

   Some people may wonder why I focus so disproportionately on youth issues. After all, young people are not the only people oppressed, either collectively or individually, in our society. Structural forces and individual prejudices often conspire to keep women and people of color from being as successful as many white males. Heterosexism is still inscribed into our nation's law codes and animates the belief systems of many people. The situation of disabled and elderly Americans bears many similarities to that of youth (albeit with some key differences). People of size are increasingly scapegoated under the guise of a "war on obesity" that conveniently doubles as a war on them. Rural people are oppressed both by the condescending attitudes of non-rural people and the very geographic realities of rurality. The poor economy is an increasingly oppressive force in the lives of more and more Americans, including those who would have once been known as middle class or even wealthy. And individuals of all demographic groups are oppressed by the military, medical, and prison industrial complexes as well as social mores which prize conformity over critical thinking and individuality. So why focus on youth?

   I focus on youth because minors are the only group of individuals in our society that almost everyone - left or right, religious or secular, educated or ignorant, authoritarian or libertarian - is openly comfortable treating as a subject class. Youth are the only group of people in the United States for whom there is widespread consensus that segregating them from the rest of society, denying them legal rights, keeping them economically dependent, and turning arbitrary authority for them over to other people is not a necessary evil but the best possible way we individually and collectively can hope to relate to them. I focus on youth because the ills of sexism, racism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, sizeism, rural oppression, poverty, and the military, medical, and prison industrial complexes are complicated and exacerbated by the status of minority. I focus on youth oppression because it is taken for granted and therefore invisible despite its ubiquity.

   I focus on youth because the critical theoretical eye that has problematized the idea of biologically essentialist gender roles and racial identities has not problematized much of the ageist pseudoscience surrounding discourses about child development. I focus on youth because those who decry the warehousing of our elders and people with disabilities in nursing homes and assisted living facilities do not draw parallels with the warehousing of our youth in schools and other institutions. I focus on youth because most libertarians see no contradiction in talking about arbitrary and oppressive state power on the one hand and using the phrase "parents' rights" on the other. I talk about youth because a commitment to human liberty and social justice demands youth liberation and those who claim to support human liberty and social justice rarely acknowledge this. I focus on youth because there is a more organized effort in our society to extend liberty and dignity to animals than to human children. I focus on youth because ageism is one of the greatest unexamined black marks on American society in the early twenty-first century. I focus on youth because if I don't few people will. And as long as all of these things are true I am a radical youth liberation supporter first, last, and always.