From the Archives: Book Review: Dignity
My review from nearly five years ago that talks about the forgotten class in American society.
Note: For those who are more recent subscribers to my Substack, there will be instances in which I post writings from my former author website. This piece dates back to July 20, 2019, featuring my review of Chris Arnade's book Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America.
The book helped me understand more about the experiences of people who we seldom hear about — the people who live in poorer neighborhoods, smaller towns, rural communities and urban areas, all which the elite have little to no contact, whether they intended it that way or not.
I still think the book is useful for understanding what these people experience and is particularly useful to understand a reason why Donald Trump won the Presidency in 2016.
I have printed the piece as it was originally written. I plan to sit down next week to write about some of the points I raised in the conclusion, though I will say that a couple of them need to be amended while there are other points I may consider, too.
At any rate, I hope you enjoy reading this piece and, if you want to read Arnade's book, it's still available at Amazon.
The first time I ran across Chris Arnade's writings was after Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election. Arnade wrote a number of articles and shared a number of Twitter threads, talking about people he met on his travels across the United States.
The people he met were those who are ignored and neglected, with nobody paying attention to them, until after the 2016 Presidential election -- when everyone asked how that result could have happened.
Arnade's travels didn't start because of that election, though. They started a couple of years after the Great Recession of 2008, in which Arnade questioned his own line of work on Wall Street, started visiting the Bronx neighborhoods and meeting with its residents.
That led to his travels across the United States, with the end result his new book, Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America.
Arnade focuses on multiple communities, such as the Hunts Point neighborhood in the South Bronx (where Arnade begins his journey); Portsmouth, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; Cairo, Illinois; Mountain Groves, Missouri; Selma, Alabama; Lexington, Nebraska; and the North Side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and more on top of those places). In every community he visits, Arnade finds similar themes tying into what he views as the biggest divide between Americans today.
He describes the biggest divide as between the front row and the back row. The divide isn't about urban neighborhoods versus rural towns (though it has elements). It isn't about liberal versus conservative (though, again, it has elements). It certainly isn't about Democrat versus Republican.
Arnade characterizes the front row as defined by their careers and education. They are the types that believe it's best to go to college, leave the place in which they grew up and go somewhere else to work. If moving up the ladder means moving from your latest place of residence, then so be it.
The back row are defined by not emphasizing education, though they do value a career. However, the careers they value are ones that would be available to them after high school, or perhaps a brief stint in the military or a smaller college, and said careers would be in the place they grew up. But even if the back row doesn't have a job, these people find value in family, faith and hometown.
Or to put it another way: The front row emphasizes things that can be measured — statistics, studies and surveys count, but what count more are the house they own, the vehicle they drive, the size of their bank account and the status they have in society, from degrees earned to social media followers gained. The back row emphasizes what can't be measured — after all, how many people do you know who put a number on family, faith or hometown?
Arnade doesn't declare the back row blameless — he recognizes that many of them are addicted to drugs. The urban neighborhoods and rural towns he visits are all ones in which drugs are prevalent. The reason why, as Arnade puts it, isn't just because these people make bad decisions. It's because they want something to provide an escape from the pain they experience.
It's easy for the front row to wave a dismissive hand and tell the back row it's the back row's fault. However, the front row has its own drug problems. The front row just calls drugs by different names. Alcohol. Television. Smartphones. Social media. Shopping. Luxuries. Stocks. Those and more are what fuel the addictions of the front row.
The back row also gets shamed for daring to bring children into this world. Hey, if you can't afford a child, you shouldn't have one, so the thinking goes. But then the front row turns around and wrings its hands over the younger generation of the front row waiting longer to have children because — guess what — they can't afford to have children, either!
Meanwhile, the back row thinks less about whether or not they can afford to have children and thinks more about the simple joy of raising a child. That the child will be brought into a life of poverty isn't a good thing, but the back row people are the ones who haven't forgotten the main reason for bringing a child into this world.
Family matters to the back row in other ways, too. One person may have a parent or grandparent who is sick and decides to stay behind to provide care. Another can't bear to move too far away from their family. And another may not have family in the blood sense, but has it in the bond sense and doesn't want to lose it.
Arnade writes about how many in the back row observe that there used to be good jobs in their communities, but the factories all packed up and left for various reasons, mostly incentives that either lowered their tax bill or their labor costs. When the factories closed, the communities declined. It wasn't that people were too lazy find a job, it's that there were no jobs available and they became disillusioned.
Some will say that's just the nature of the free market, even though it's really the government that made it easier for factories to move, whether it was through subsidies to lure them elsewhere or free trade agreements that allowed them to outsource the jobs for cheaper labor. In other words, governments allowed the businessmen to treat the communities as disposable assets.
Thus comes the call from others who simply look at the communities and ask everyone there, "Why don't you just move?" First of all, they couldn't if they wanted to — moving costs money, particularly in the form of transportation. If they don't own a car (and no doubt plenty in the front row will complain if they do), the only way out is to walk, which means traveling down roads and highways in which vehicle roar down at 65 miles per hour or more.
One particular highlight of Dignity is that Arnade focuses on the importance of McDonald's to the back row. McDonald's is a business that the front row treats with disdain, from reasons ranging from serving unhealthy food to the way it exploits its workforce.
While those reasons hold some merit, Arnade's visits to McDonald's showed a common theme: They served as a place for locals to gather to have conversation, sometimes to hold activities such as Bible study groups. Homeless people visit to wash up and get a drink. Others used the free WiFi and charged their phones.
McDonald's served as the place in which Arnade found plenty of people to visit with and learn more about the neighborhood or city. And many times over, he finds people who may not have a college education, but that doesn't make them dumb — in fact, many of them prove to be quite insightful and a few raised points that I would have a hard time giving a rebuttal, because it's a point I couldn't argue.
Arnade also focuses on faith and the importance of the church to people. He admits he was an atheist when he started his journey across America, but learned to respect the importance of faith and religion in people's lives. There are many stories about Christianity, but Arnade even shares a story about a white man who says that Islam saved him from addiction. Arnade describes that the churches may judge people, but they give them a second chance and send the messages that we are all sinners — or to put it another way, we all make mistakes — and that people are welcome in the church as long as they try to do better.
Though Arnade has talked about factors that led to Donald Trump becoming President, the book doesn't emphasize that — though he does touch upon it. He notes that identity is something that many people value and, when people become disillusioned, their identity can turn ugly. In some cases, it led to back row people supporting Trump. In other cases, identity meant they rejected Trump, but that didn't always make them back Hillary Clinton.
Before getting into the 2016 election, Arnade devotes a chapter to racism — a subject many have difficulty discussing and, for those who do, they don't always take the conversation where it needs to go. Arnade describes the real problem with racism thusly: After segregation ended, new barriers to entry rose, ranging from blacks being unable to afford homes to being unable to obtain loans, and if they managed either, messages were sent that they were welcome only if they wore the right clothes, drove the right cars, listened to the right music and said the right words.
While it's easy to point out that whites at the time didn't get that treatment, in today's environment, back row whites are getting the same messages about clothing, cars, music and the words they use — all dictated by the front row, who sets the bar for what people need to do to qualify, and adjusts it as the front row sees fit. In other words, it's not so much "acting white" or even "acting front row" but being front row. And that leaves both black and white people in the back row to hold the front row in contempt.
Unfortunately, the back row gets divided when racism surfaces — though it's not the racism that drove it as much as the treatment the front row gives the back row. As Arnade points out, when the back row has to sit around in one government institutional building after another, it becomes demeaning and, thus, easy to find a scapegoat for their issues.
I'd describe Arnade's book as one punch to the gut after another. He doesn't sugarcoat, he's direct and to the point and he lets the words of the people he visits speak for themselves. Arnade almost never uses a person's first and last name (there are a few exceptions) but the words are enough to get the point across. Even so, he always treats everybody as a human being, rather than a caricature to be judged by others.
Two quotes stood out in particular. When Arnade visited Lewiston, Maine, he noticed that a number of Somali immigrants lived there and have even revitalized the downtown area. While in a McDonald's, Arnade visits with a number of men — mostly white — who complain about the Somalis, though a few do give them credit for how they restored the downtown. All but one man named Bill leaves, at which point Arnade says that Bill shakes his head and opens up.
"I am OK with Somalis. The ones you hear who are anti-Somali, it is consistent with how they were raised. They didn't like blacks back when we were young. They are working-class French Canadians, and they worked in the mills, and they have forgotten that their parents' generation, who moved here in the 1910s and '20s, and got beat up by the Irish in town! We were the ones who didn't speak English, who everyone said was taking jobs, who were getting stuff for free. We were called the white niggers of Maine. How soon they forget. It is sad."
A quick note before I go on: The Somali immigrants who Arnade talks to relate stories about how they weren't welcome in their first neighborhood in Atlanta, where they lived alongside black people, but were relocated to Lewiston and found it to be a better place to live. A woman named Fowisa says, while she had a few negative experiences, she prefers to look at the positive and talks about a man named Bob, who was always kind and helpful. He became ill and the Somalis raised money to help with the bills. After he died, she attended his funeral and Bob's brother spoke, thanking the Somalis for helping Bob and, after the service, everyone approached Fowisa and hugged her.
The other quote that stood out, I think serves as a great lesson for a major reason why the Democrats lost the 2016 Presidential election. Arnade visits with a black man in Bakersfield, Calif., at — you guessed it — McDonald's. The man, who introduces himself as Sage, has a brief conversation with Arnade and Sage takes a little interest in Arnade's work on Wall Street. Sage is about to get up, but relays a speech to Arnade:
"White-collar crime is the biggest crime, but nobody gets thrown in jail for that. Nobody gets prosecuted. Not only don't they get any of that, they get a big check from the president. Barack Obama tells us he is one of us, says, 'Look at my skin; I am one of you,' but he doesn't help anybody when they down except you bankers. Nobody helps us out here. We get thrown in jail. This here is a crooked society, and they wonder why we run from police. We ain't blind. People we have in office are criminals and protect their big friends who are also criminals. We out on the streets, voters, we suffer. Nobody has a heart in this country. Step into a homeless shelter and see how the system doesn't care about anybody hurting. Really hurts. Nobody likes to face reality."
I would assume Sage didn't vote for Trump or Clinton in 2016 — he is most likely the type of person who didn't vote because he didn't like either candidate. It's those type of voters that decide elections more often than not, yet it was those type of voters that Clinton may have rolled out an idea or two to help, but never stressed those ideas and, instead, focused on the front row.
The book includes multiple photo galleries, which include images that some will find disturbing, but are necessary to illustrate what these people experience. I imagine that some readers will be turned off by such material, though.
One area I wish Arnade had addressed was health care — not because I'm looking at that for its importance in addressing addiction, but because access to doctors and hospitals is a critical element that the back row is often lacking. While getting them health insurance is a noble cause, it doesn't do any good if a rural hospital shuts down or there aren't any doctors available in the neighborhoods. (Indeed, look at most cities and the medical facilities are almost always where the front row reside and commute.)
There are quite a few grammatical errors that weren't caught (because I'm a writer, I notice these things) and there may be a conversation or two I didn't think added anything. But the weak spots are few and what makes this book so good is Arnade passes no judgment on anybody. He simply lets everyone's words and experience speak for themselves.
Arnade offers no solutions to how the back row can be helped but raises a valid point that the first step is to listen to what these people have to say. I would offer another suggestion: We need to stop thinking of economic development as based on our post-World War II patterns (single-family housing in suburban neighborhoods, automobiles dominating the landscape and primarily thought of as a status symbol, health care covered by employer-provided insurance, college education is the only way to go after high school, and most of all, the stock market and GDP are the ultimate economic measures of success).
Instead, we should realize that whenever the economy changes, we need to think about who gets affected or left behind, and not treat them as disposable. Policies at the federal, state and local level should promote stability for communities, rather than emphasizing numbers on a spreadsheet.
It goes without saying that I highly recommend Dignity, which provides a much-needed reminder about spending less time on the things that can be measured, and more time on what can't be measured. The materialistic may look nice, but it's no substitute for what you can't assign a number.