Sociology Compass 10/10 (2016), 906–917, 10.1111/soc4.12348 Grow Old With Me! Future Directions of Race, Age, and Place Scholarship Mary E. Byrnes * Sociology and Institute for Detroit Studies, Marygrove College, Detroit, Michigan USA Abstract This article reviews current theories of age and place to demonstrate a more inclusive perspective in so- ciology that considers race, age, and place. Scholars who study age have advanced our knowledge about what place means to old people or how environment operates in an oppressive way to aged bodies. Like- wise, race scholars have advanced our knowledge about the ways oppression and White supremacy are rooted in place. Yet the two bodies of literature do not inform one another, and there are potentially dangerous gaps in our knowledge that contribute to oppression. The result is age scholarship about en- vironment that lacks a critical race perspective and race scholarship on place that ignores the oppressive conditions of age. By reviewing these pieces, I argue that scholars must inform themselves of the ways in which we overlook important analyses and may potentially contribute to our own ageism. As a graduate student, I had the opportunity to present some very early findings of my disser- tation research about age and place at the Midwest Sociological Society (Byrnes, 2007). During the question and answer period, an old woman, a Black old woman, and distinguished professor (ashamedly, I do not remember her name), remarked (and I paraphrase), I think this is the first study I have seen about old black men that did not problematize them as a body of diseases or criminals. They are a real group of people with very ordinary lives, desires, and dreams: nice work. I do not open with this anecdote to pat myself on the back. I offer this story because it reinforced my own lifelong frustration as a gerontologist – scholarship never seemed to reflect the some- what ordinary and everyday lives of older adults I worked for as an activist in Detroit, Michigan. I longed for scholarship that moved marginalized individuals and narratives to the center of our discussions. And as a scholarly young romantic, I hoped this decentering scholarship smashed paradigms, interrogated processes, and ultimately improved the lives of those individuals we study. I simply could not understand at the time why there was not a critical race perspective in gerontology rather than reducing non-White aged bodies to essentialist discussions of diabe- tes intervention in mostly Black senior housing and communities. At the root of this overly kind professor’s comments was something most sociology of age scholars and critical gerontologists know, we are fighting ageism and racism in every area of scholarship. Nearly 8 years later I still ask myself, where are the critical race theorists on old age, place, and age relations? There is a dangerous gap in our sociological imaginations when it comes to race and old age: nowhere might this vacancy be more evident than in place-based studies. As feminist sociologists Toni Calasanti and Kathleen Slevin (2006) point out in feminist studies of age, © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.