Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America

by Chris Arnade

Widely acclaimed photographer and writer Chris Arnade shines new light on America's poor, drug-addicted, and forgotten--both urban and rural, blue state and red state--and indicts the elitists who've left them behind.

Like Jacob Riis in the 1890s, Walker Evans in the 1930s, or Michael Harrington in the 1960s, Chris Arnade bares the reality of our current class divide in stark pictures and unforgettable true stories. Arnade's raw, deeply reported accounts cut through today's clickbait media headlines and indict the elitists who misunderstood poverty and addiction in America for decades.

After abandoning his Wall Street career, Arnade decided to document poverty and addiction in the Bronx. He began interviewing, photographing, and becoming close friends with homeless addicts, and spent hours in drug dens and McDonald's. Then he started driving across America to see how the rest of the country compared. He found the same types of stories everywhere, across lines of race, ethnicity, religion, and geography.

The people he got to know, from Alabama and California to Maine and Nevada, gave Arnade a new respect for the dignity and resilience of what he calls America's Back Row--those who lack the credentials and advantages of the so-called meritocratic upper class. The strivers in the Front Row, with their advanced degrees and upward mobility, see the Back Row's values as worthless. They scorn anyone who stays in a dying town or city as foolish, and mock anyone who clings to religion or tradition as naive.

As Takeesha, a woman in the Bronx, told Arnade, she wants to be seen she sees herself: "a prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God." This book is his attempt to help the rest of us truly see, hear, and respect millions of people who've been left behind.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Sociology, Photography, American, Cultural, Social Justice

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 4, 2019

Reviews

[Phil Greaney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure about how I feel about this book, the project and its approach.

I find it relatively easy to admire Arnade and his ostensible intention: to leave his job and the 'front row' world he occupies, immerse himself in the world and people from the 'back row', listen, learn and try to understand and to share what he learns in photographs and a relatively short series of discussions on themes like coping, drugs and death. It appears to come from a place of heart-felt, honest, direct investigation: the encounters are striking, arresting and moving.

On the other hand, Arnade doesn't appear to have the kind of background or knowledge or experience to help him understand what he so credibly sees. Let me say that the book is best when it doesn't try to explain, analyse, or account for the 'back row': when he lets people speak, either through photographs or through brief conversations, or aspires to act as an 'absent' narrator (that is, one bereft of an ideological viewpoint, a bias, or subjective response) and attempts to objectively describe what he finds, then the book is at its best.

But of course, this is impossible: he wants to explain, find cause, suggest reasons, and when he strays into this territory, I think it's reasonable to critique the approach for not providing a broader context - that is, there is not an academic nor journalistic discussion based economics, or sociology or even psychology; there are no graphs, no charts, no figures by which he's able to support his claims. I am not criticising him for not writing that kind of book: it's just that when he seeks to explain, to move beyond the immediate encounters, his explanations demand that he supports them with evidence, none of which is forthcoming.

But I don't think that's the point of the book. It's about reminding us - us in the 'front row', if we're lucky enough to find ourselves there - that there is a people who, like us, ask for respect, for a chance, for freedom and fairness - for dignity - and from whom we have separated ourselves, in a place next to us on the other side of a thin veneer, there but for the grace of the universe go we.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last year, I went to the State Fair, and simply sat and watched the people pass by. The vast majority were lower class, and looked it. I tried, for a change, to ignore the externals and imagine myself conversing with individuals with whom, to an outside observer, I have nothing in common. Chris Arnade wrote "Dignity" to document a similar exercise, though one far more in-depth. He travelled the country, talking to many people from the lower classes, what he calls the “back row.” Then he wrote up what he had learned, and added a great deal by filling the book with pictures, so that the reader can perform the same exercise I did at the State Fair, and ponder respect and the back row in today’s society.

I really wanted to like this book. I agree with much in it. Like me, Arnade doesn’t think a rising GDP per capita is the measure of human flourishing. But what Arnade never asks is where dignity comes from or, for that matter, what it is. As a result, he is unwilling or unable to make distinctions that need to be made, and he refuses to require anything, anything at all, of the back row, even when their behavior is, by choice, utterly degraded. This lack of clear thinking sharply reduces the value of his book.

Thus, in a couple whom Arnade spends a lot of time with, where the husband’s only employment is to pimp the wife so they can buy drugs and find a place to stay, both husband and wife stridently claim that they have dignity. And maybe they do, in the eyes of God, and in the sense that no human life is worthless and each should be cherished. But in the eyes of man, their behavior is degraded and wholly unacceptable. The real definition of dignity is the feeling of knowing that one has done the best that one can, with what one has, to fulfil one’s purpose and duty to God and man, from which flows self-respect and the respect of others. Dignity has to be earned by meeting legitimate expectations, not demanded, assigned, or redistributed. Arnade cannot, or cannot bring himself to, distinguish the activities of prostituting oneself for drugs and of working a good manufacturing job to support one’s family. Only one of these things can truly lead to dignity.

The book is far from worthless, however. In a well-run society, everyone should have the opportunity to earn dignity, and Arnade does show how many in the back row are today denied that opportunity. That denial is the result of the world the front-row kids, the worst ruling class ever, have made. The derelictions and cretinisms of that class, however named, have been very well covered in a series of recent books. James Bloodworth’s "Hired" (where dignity is a major focus). Tucker Carlson’s "Ship of Fools." Oren Cass’s "The Once and Future Worker." Richard Reeves’s "Dream Hoarders." Joan Williams’s "White Working Class." Arlie Hochschild’s "Strangers in Their Own Land." Angelo Codevilla’s "The Ruling Class." And many more. "Dignity" is best viewed as complementary to those lines of thought, not a groundbreaking study of its own, which it could have been had Arnade been willing to make distinctions among those to whom he talked.

Arnade’s path to alienation from the front row was gradual. He grew up in Florida and left his hometown after high school, seeking the life of the front row: based on the right education and the right jobs. In his taxonomy, the “front-row kids” are perhaps twenty percent of the population, those who follow the new cursus honorum, getting the right college degrees, the right jobs, and the right connections, and end up at the top of today’s society. The back-row kids are the opposite (and there is also an in-between).

The front row is money-centered, yes, but also unmoored from home, or from any place at all, and ignorant of anything that can’t be measured, such as “community, dignity, faith, happiness.” The difference between being front row and back row used to be not as stark. The front row gave up certain comforts, including a sense of home, in exchange for a more cosmopolitan existence; the back row took the opposite deal. But now, the front row have gathered everything to themselves, and left the back row with the dregs. The back row, left without jobs and surrounded by the lure of drugs, and, just as importantly, dealing with the resulting destruction of communities, are “now left living in a banal world of hyper efficient fast-food franchises, strip malls, discount stores, and government buildings with flickering fluorescent lights and dreary-colored walls festooned with rules. They are left with a world where their sense of home and family and community won’t get them anywhere, won’t pay the bills.”

Perhaps to simplify things, Arnade ignores gradations among the back row, and effectively focuses on what is probably the bottom five percent of society, what is better called the underclass. Every society has an underclass, and while in all the places Arnade profiles, it is probably more than five percent, perhaps even more than fifty percent, the underclass is not really synonymous with the back row, which Arnade defines as those unable, in practice, to enter the first rungs of the cursus honorum. Arnade pays more attention, though he does not emphasize, that the back row also has an important geographic component, where it is hard to enter the front row unless you grow up on the coasts or in a handful of big cities. I grew up more back row than front row, even though my father was a university professor at a large midwestern state university, since at no point were the options for entering the front row made clear to me by anybody, and I suspect they were not to my high school classmates, either. Nobody at my large state university told me of usual front-row job options like consulting and finance, and I drifted into law mostly because I got a perfect score on the LSAT, and thus largely by inertia ended up at a front-row law school. Even there, nobody told me anything about what law practice was really like, or the gradations among law firms, or all the knowledge that is critical to a planned journey through the front row. I managed, though, and in my favor, I did not have the J. D. Vance problem of lack of objective sophistication, since I had the book knowledge of front-row behavior. Then I threw it all away to make myself rich from scratch in a back-row job, but that is another story.

Arnade, also from Nowheresville, obtained a doctorate in physics and was a successful Wall Street trader for twenty years, but ultimately found that unsatisfying and also turned his back on his class (at least in his employment; it is not clear if he changed his social circles). Around 2012 Arnade drifted into spending his days in Hunts Point, a physically isolated and very poor part of the Bronx. There he got to know many of the locals, and grew to understand their lives—most of all by the simple expedient of hanging out at the local McDonald’s, social center of every depressed area. He did this for three years; then, seeing that he was getting sucked into the lives of his interlocutors, and that nothing ever changed or improved for them, he went travelling around the country. Portsmouth, Ohio. Gary. Bakersfield. Prestonburg, Kentucky. Milwaukee. Selma. All places where the back row dominates and there is no front row to speak of.

Arnade treats these places as functionally the same, with the exception of racism, of which more later. But these places are not all the same. Yes, they all lack jobs, and that has destroyed these communities; it is, or appears to be, the original sin. Arnade blames globalization and Wall Street for the loss of jobs, the unending lust for profits and efficiency, and he is right, certainly. Like Sam Quinones’s Dreamland, this book spends a lot of time discussing Portsmouth, and I have more than forty years of personal connection there, since my grandparents lived there and I spent every winter and summer vacation there when I was growing up (we did not have money to travel, ever). In Portsmouth, good jobs “were the backbone of the community”; they allowed people to build a family around a stable and well-paying job. The town is now unrecognizable even compared to what it was when I was a child, and then it was already on the downstroke.

In fact, Portsmouth and Selma are not actually the same as Hunts Point and Bakersfield. In the former, the jobs have disappeared and are not coming back; it is difficult to find any gainful employment. In the latter, people could find work nearby, but the people Arnade talks to don’t want that work, or, most of them, to work at all. Hunts Point is part of New York City. There are an infinite number of jobs in New York. The people in Hunts Point just don’t want them; they would rather lead their degraded, derelict lives. In Hunts Point, they tell Arnade “There is no jobs here, buddy. No jobs. Just nothing for nobody to do.” That’s objectively false, but Arnade says nothing except to plead for dignity, which here means mostly not stigmatizing people for being lazy and making degrading choices.

In Portsmouth and Selma, it is more plausible that there simply are no jobs, and there are certainly no good manufacturing jobs at big companies as there once were, but the reader has the distinct suspicion that the Hunts Point attitude is more prevalent than Arnade lets on. I have personal experience with this—I employ a large number of employees in light manufacturing, and it is extremely difficult to find workers who will show up and do the work, which is well paid (starting at twice minimum wage), offers good benefits, and is neither dangerous nor especially grueling. Anecdotally, you hear frequently of employers in places like Portsmouth, machine shops, for example, unable to hire even when offering excellent jobs with free training. I am quite sure, from experience (I have had a lot of direct contact with the back row), that nearly everyone Arnade talks to would not take my jobs if I offered them, or rather, might take them, and then would not show up except when it pleased them to do so. The problem, in other words, is not just that the jobs have disappeared, but also that the work ethic has disappeared.

Why? Is it lack of jobs, or something else? Is that broken families and illegitimate children are now the norm in all these communities (something about which Arnade says not a word) the result of lack of jobs, or the result of something else? How does the ubiquitous consumer mindset, where people work two jobs so they can buy more cheap, disposable Chinese tat to brighten their life for a day or two, figure in? It is instructive to read Charles Murray’s classic 2012 book "Coming Apart" to get some insight. Using extensive statistics, Murray shows how the “cognitive elite,” his term for the front row, has separated from the lower classes, who have sunk into various forms of dysfunction, with the disappearance of “family, vocation, community and faith.” It is also instructive to read Theodore Dalrymple’s "Life at the Bottom," about the British underclass. Dalrymple assigns blame to the spread of nonjudgmentalism, totally absorbed by the underclass, which is in essence the same thing as believing in dignity as lack of stigma. Reading works like these makes clear that it’s not just lack of jobs that has cast the back row down; lack of jobs has instead contributed to a broader decline in moral fiber, that has deeper roots, though the front row is still to blame, as it is for the disappearance of jobs, since it was their deliberate destruction of virtue that is a major cause.

What Arnade won’t say, though, he at least allows one of his conversation partners to say. In Prestonburg, Kentucky, one man says “Parents and grandparents took their kids and grandkids; they don’t do that anymore. We used to be self-sufficient here. People wouldn’t take gifts. We had pride. Self-respect. Then we were flooded with gifts from the government; it took people’s pride and self-respect away. The government and internet hurt our churches, and Walmart coming to town closed every mom-and-pop business. Now people only take pride in drugs.” The problem is that reversing this is not as easy as simply backing up.

Drugs are the downfall of the vast majority of these people, and Arnade spends a lot of time talking about them. He attributes usage to dulling the pain and giving people a moment of joy, which is doubtless true. But he is somewhat credulous, attributing most drug use to “dissociation” resulting from childhood betrayal of trust, reinforced by lack of trust on the street. As always he offers no judgment, and no requirement for any sort of personal responsibility. Wherever precisely the truth lies, the easier availability of drugs that comes with legalization is revealed as yet another social policy that would benefit primarily the front-row kids and harm the back-row kids. The solution isn’t as easy as stricter enforcement, though. There is something to be said for the Indonesian or Singaporean approach, but Arnade isn’t wrong that jobs would help. Again, though, I don’t think it’s mostly the jobs—it’s the web of society and community that is, over time, generated by good jobs, the type that permits a man on his pay alone to support a wife and children, creating strong families, without which no community is possible. That web makes drugs less attractive, an effect beneficially increased by social stigma imposed on drug users.

If, reading Arnade’s stories, you listen closely, two elements keep rustling in the background, whispering to the reader that respect, or even human pity, is not the only necessary reaction to the plight of the people portrayed. The first is that the back row, in Arnade’s telling, firmly rejects help from non-profits and other charitable organizations, non-governmental and governmental. Arnade does not discuss the details of what is offered, but he makes very clear that those he talks to have a fierce aversion to any such help. Their objection is not that they cannot get needed help; rather, it is that “rules and lectures about behavior,” to which help is supposedly tied, are not to their taste. It seems unlikely, though, in today’s obsessively nonjudgmental environment, that there are any such lectures. No doubt bureaucracy is annoying, and as James Bloodworth says, poverty is the thief of time—but all the people Arnade talks to have nothing but time. The reader intuits that Arnade interlocutors have, again, absorbed that any stigma is a great offense; rather than feel stigmatized, or told, even gently, they should consider stopping their vice-ridden habits, they will try their hardest to avoid getting help.

But then, the second element—how do these people find the money to live? Arnade implies that they hustle in various ways, but the reality flashes through. When talking about a prostitute in Hunts Point who came from Oklahoma, and asking her if she wants to go back, she responds that everyone from home is busy. “I got nothing to offer them. What am I gonna be? A social security check that everyone wants.” Bingo. There it is. The government, as far as I can tell, gives money to all the people Arnade profiles, but he never mentions it, except for this one oblique reference, and a second reference that “the welfare office,” like other government and official offices, “are just big buildings that give them nothing but heartache and problems.” What heartache? What problems? We are not told. We are just supposed to accept the choice made to reject help in changing, but to accept cash. No judgment permitted. The reader is left with the conclusion that if cash, or perhaps medicine, is given out, the back row, or the underclass portion of the back row, will eagerly accept it. What they don’t want is help to end their pathologies.

Arnade is on strongest ground when he talks about religion, which for the vast majority of the people he talks to is their sole actionable route to real dignity, via the transcendent. In every place he goes, he visits local churches, attending services as a welcomed guest. He admits to his own hideous scientism and notes that everyone he meets in the Bronx “who was living homeless or battling an addiction held a deep faith.” “The preachers and congregants inside may preach to them, even judge their past decisions, but they don’t look down on them.” He himself becomes no longer an atheist, nor a believer only in the instrumental value of religion, but—something else.

Arnade is on weakest ground when he talks about racism, which is quite a bit. By racism, he means racism against African Americans. (He never quite comes out and says it, but it’s entirely obvious that, like any thinking person, he realizes that the only type of racism that matters or has any historical freight is that against African Americans. Hispanics, for example, claiming historical racism should go pound sand.) No doubt in the twentieth century African Americans were frequently deliberately economically disadvantaged in ways that still echo today, a topic well covered in Richard Rothstein’s fantastic The Color of Law, which Arnade does not cite, but should. Arnade notes that the front row is all about credentials, and African Americans find it hardest to obtain credentials. Affirmative action merely offers a tiny slice of people the ability to reach the front row—on the condition they leave home, “readjust their values, [and] readjust their worldview.”

Among African Americans in the back row, though, it’s pretty evident from the people Arnade talks to that racism as a problem is usually a distant competitor to lack of education and lack of jobs. Among whites and Hispanics in the back row, most are not racist at all. But Arnade can’t just leave it there. He’s a man of the Left, as he likes to remind us, and he keeps talking about the supposed problem of increasing racism among resentful whites. Now, I agree this is a real potential problem—as I frequently say, and am now more frequently saying, white racism channeled by a competent politician is likely to be a winning political strategy come the next big economic downturn, and it’s not going to be pretty. But Arnade never portrays any of his interlocutors as racist at all, and that undercuts his claims, which therefore seemed shoehorned in.

[Review completes as first comment.]

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up pretty poor in the rural south. my half sister's dad (not my father) stole our only vcr for crack when I was young, we lived in a trailer in one of the poorer counties in one of the poorer states in the union and when I go back home there's a striking realization that everyone in my family that is home is hurting in some way. I give you this preface to give you the context for the rest of this review.


I hated hillbilly elegy and most wealthy educated elitist who try to write novels or tell stories about poor people.

Chris is a highly educated person with a background in physics who worked in finance he has a well off background.

Despite this he has somehow found a way to give a fair treatment an America that is poor on a sublime level. I don't think this mistreatment is new. Orientalism to me has the same misguided aim of outsider looking in. They always seem to romanticize the aspects they like the most or that which is politically expedient to do so.

The crime aspect of the book, speaking from a place of my own knowledge, was plausible. the journalism on the workers and intraracial racism was...important. it isn't important in some abstract sense, it's important that it seems to be actual honest to God journalism that needs to happen. Americans need to know that racism isn't only not over but evolving and growing in new and terrifying ways.

He doesn't put these people on a pedestal. he doesn't focus on race as a means to an end but he doesn't discount it entirely.

It's incomplete and anecdotal but it's important work.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

2024 Review
I challenged myself in 2024 to re-read the books that impacted me most in my 20s.
I was surprised to find this book in audio format as I remember it primarily for the photos Arnade took while visiting impoverished neighborhoods. I still think listening to it on audio misses some of the power that comes from the photos. ("A picture is worth a thousand words.") But on the upside, listening to it on audio allowed for a very focused narrative. There are no distractions. There are only the stories of these men and women and their struggle to get by.
Arnade ends the book with more questions than answers. On the one hand, I appreciated this, as it felt like he was truly grappling with the problem and not embracing a political party or solution for all the answers. But it also leaves the reader without much to hang their hat on. He challenges firmly rooted beliefs about education and bettering yourself, but doesn't know what to do with it.
I wouldn't say this book impacted me as much as Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, but it was certainly thought providing and worth a read.


2021 Review
Much like reading Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, I appreciate this book because it puts words to feelings that I struggle to express. The feelings of Milwaukee, of rural Tennessee, of agrarian Iowa, of the bayous of Louisiana, of life in towns where the jobs left but community stayed.
It is a book that grapples with poverty and respect. It doesn't always do it perfectly. Other reviews rightly critique the author for playing too significant a role in this narrative, or making sweeping statements, or simply providing no new insights on race and resentment. But it does do things I greatly appreciate. Arnade doesn't force-feed readers a solution. He allows his pictures to do much of the talking. And his chapter on faith is truly worth reading. I gave this book 5 stars for it.
I appreciate that the author approaches this book with humility. He highlights the different values between what he refers to as "front row" and "back row" America. But his desire to quantify the two groups probably reflects this book's biggest weakness. The two don't exist on different planes. They aren't "haves" and "have nots."
Arnade captures this somewhat. He doesn't criticize those who stay for community, for faith, for identity. He contrasts it with the things he was taught to value: mobility, connections, science. Then he recognizes that he grew up in a town he now considers "back row." He's depressed by where he grew up. And he can't seem to reconcile his own frustrated emotions of where he came from with who he became and even more, where he is going. So where does that leave him? Confused.
And where does that leave the reader? Annoyed that he keeps intruding on this narrative.
But what he expresses amidst his confusion, the loss and frustration he highlights in these photos, the lack of jobs and desire for more, that all makes this a really memorable, worthwhile book to read. And I think despite his groping and desire to put people into a categories, he captures something important: Americans share more in common than they realize. Whether they're in the front row or the back row, whether we value faith or science, whether we escaped or stayed, we're connected.

[Amy Bruestle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was given to me after winning though a giveaway in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this book a lot. Being a recovering addict myself, i could closely identify with the people in this book! I have also seen first hand the way the groupies hangout at mcdonalds, barbershops, churches, motels, etc. I’ve been there myself! The pictures are great too! They really brought the book to life!

My only complaint is maybe spend more time on the people’s lives and less on their cities. The people are what we want to hear about!

[Rick Presley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot say enough good about this book. It is an unflinching and nonjudgemental set of vignettes of those who are most ignored in this country. It doesn't advocate for any set solution or social reform agenda. The number one best thing about this book is that it doesn't offer a glib fix to the problem.

One of the key lessons I've learned in working with the homeless and addicted is that not everyone wants the same thing. And one of the things the middle and affluent classes don't grasp is that not everyone wants to be like them. This is breaking news to social justice warriors and something many of them cannot fathom. How can people NOT want the affluence they enjoy? For many, the cost is too high.

I don't think this book will help everyone to understand, but it will hopefully make some of them aware.

[David M · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating road trip through the dark heart of the USA.

The growth of extreme poverty has surely been the biggest story in America for the past generation or two. A definitive history of the making of this underclass has yet to be written. Chris Arnade does not attempt that here, offering something more humble. He thinks Americans don't spend enough time listening to each other, and so he goes out and makes friends and records their stories. As a series of profiles, the book is often stunning. After reading it, you should feel inspired to go hang out at McDonald's. Reflect on how much liberal and, regrettably, even left-wing culture is constructed to make you feel superior to other people.

...
Unfortunately, when the book ventures into politics things go awry. In his conclusion, Arnade says he doesn't know what the solution is but thinks we should try and cultivate empathy. Well, sure. Who could argue with that? Even shitbag Republican Senator Tom Cotton (who thinks America has an "under-incarceration" problem) can applaud that sentiment. Indeed his praise appears on the back of the book.

Arande's stabs at class analysis are woefully inadequate. He talks about "front row" versus "back row" Americans as if they're two rival social cliques in high school. At times dangerously close to David Brooks. Is "front row" America supposed to correspond to the ruling class? He spends a lot of time agonizing over his own privileged life, but in the end he's not nearly hard enough on the class to which he seems to belong. Because the stratification of American society, and concomitant growth in extreme poverty, has not been a mistake by well-intentioned but clueless elites. Fundamentally poverty is not a misunderstanding that might be cleared up with better listening. It's an assertion of power by one class over another. The only possible solution is building political power to fight back.

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a generous and compassionate companion to Hoschield’s Strangers in their own land (and a nice counter to JD Vance). The best part of it is that when he talks about forgotten people, he doesn’t just talk about white people. Duh.

[Jess Etheridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about people. Mmmm. A journalist finds himself leaving his Manhattan subculture to walk around neighborhoods in NYC that have the worst reputations. What he finds are mothers, fathers, friends, dreamers, and doers living their lives with such a different purpose and goals than he imagined. The friendships he makes inspire him to explore other “back row” communities all over America. He visits rural, jobless towns, neighborhoods run by gangs, streets lined with workers and drugs. The interviews and observations he reports are captivating- I could not put this book down! You don’t have to agree with all of his “solutions” to enjoy it. He mostly realizes that things are a lot more murky and gray instead of all the clear cut answers he thought he had before he met the actual people involved.

[Kressel Housman · Rating 4 out of 5]

To start this review, I want to share that I’ve been in touch with Chris Arnade, the author of this book, and I’m totally jazzed about it. Getting immediate responses from authors is one of the great benefits of social media. When used right, it can really lift the level of humanity’s interaction.

I first heard of the book because Chris was interviewed on the “Pitchfork Economics” podcast, and if you understand what that’s about, you’ll understand something about this book. Chris is very much like the podcast host: he was a successful entrepreneur who realized that the “winner take all” mentality that has shaped our economy for the last few decades could end in violent class warfare, and he’s the one who stands to lose. To quote another guest author from the podcast, “Winners have to start taking less.” It’s either that or face the pitchforks.

Chris used a phrase that really spoke to me. He made the distinction between “back row” and “front row” people, and he tied it specifically to school. In the “front row” are people who tried to show their teachers how much they knew so they could earn the grades that would get them into a good college and then set them up with a high-paying career. “Back row” people are the ones who hoped the teachers would never call on them. They didn’t excel in school, so they got blue collar jobs, and now that those have dried up, they’re being blamed for their poverty. But what is moral about a system that is designed to sort the world into “winners” and “losers?” To paraphrase another author on this topic, we should be striving for excellence for everybody, and not set up a competition that “weeds out” and determines who is “the best.”

Anyone who regularly reads my reviews knows that education is one of the issues I’m most passionate about. That’s why I was so happy to discover Chris and his “front row” and “back row” dichotomy. People don’t seem to recognize just how central school is to our identities. Everyone recognizes the primacy of parenting, but school is loco parentis for us for many hours of our lives, beginning in our formative years. How can it not have as big a psychological impact? I personally believe that many of the psychological scars I bear today originated in school, and not with my parents. When you put little kids in the “front row,” and demand that they perform and prove how smart they are on test after test, you end up with a bunch of hypercompetitive, fragile egotists. That’s what the “front row” looked like to me.

But this book is more about “back row,” the people who dropped out of the competition long ago and were never given a chance to catch up. It’s part photography book, part ethnography, and it’s all about the small towns where unemployment and drug use run rampant. The book also touches on Trump’s election, but it was mostly written before then, even though it was only published now.

The main point is that human beings always find a source of dignity, whether it’s community or church or friendship. Chris is not using that as an excuse to ignore the plight of the poor, but it is something front row people should consider instead of being disdainful of the back row, as so many of us were trained to do. If their lack of material wealth has forced them to find dignity in the simple things, then perhaps we can start doing the same. For too long, we’ve measured success by quantifiable things like test scores and salaries. But if we learned to value our lives beyond our earnings, then maybe we’d give up our wealth more easily and spread it around better. The poor aren’t “undeserving.” It’s a myth we’ve had hammered into us for years. And it’s about time we changed.

[Emmkay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essays/reflections and photographs focused on the author's travels through what he terms 'back row America'. These are people who stay in communities that lack opportunities, where factories are closed and houses boarded up, and for whom the prospect of drug abuse, sex work, and incarceration may be ever-present. 'Front row' America, by contrast, he describes as consisting of physically and upwardly mobile 'credentialed' Americans like himself. I think that probably misses some nuance but is still a distinction that resonates.

The photos are striking and moving. I understand he sought consent to take them, but I wonder about some of the issues involved in doing so - sometimes his subjects were high and the photos could be distressing to them or to their family later. He was also lending them his phone or giving them some money from time to time. These are tricky issues.

In reading the text, I appreciated Arnade's recognition of his own subjectivity and some of the ethical dilemmas of his engagement with these communities of new-to-him friends, though I also found some of his reflections meandery and more focused on his own reactions than on the people he was encountering and from whom I wanted to hear more. For example, I really enjoyed reading about the central role of McDonalds in many towns and would have read more about that very happily! Lots to ponder. 3.5.

[Peter Beck · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who has taken thousands of street photographs from Mongolia to Mozambique (but none in my own country), I truly admire what Chris Arnade set out to do: Capture in images and words Americans who are struggling. Despite significant shortcomings, the product of his toils, "Dignity," is well worth spending time with.

Arnade's most striking image is of a homeless father on the street with his two children in a shopping cart. Why it isn't on the cover is beyond me. The first photo essay, "New York City" effectively captures the three years he spent getting to know the down and out residents of Hunts Point. Arnade tries to help Takeesha and her circle of friends, but to distressingly little effect. This takes an emotional and physical toll on Arnade, although being the trained physicist paid to stare at bond prices for 18 years that he was would have driven me to drink. I did not come away with the "hope" that J.D. Vance promises on the cover.

In many ways "Dignity" stands as a stark counterpoint to James and Deborah Fallows' "Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America" (2018). For starters, James Fallows piloted his own plane from town to town. Arnade traveled 150,000 by minivan. The Fallows began each visit by meeting with community leaders; Arnade avoided them. For the Fallows, their focal point for interviews were microbreweries. Arnade? McDonald's.

I wish there had been more pictures and less text. I skimmed the chapters that I am all too familiar with, like "Drugs" and "Racism." The Washington Post just ran the latest installment of its powerful series on America's drug crisis and I am still digesting the NYT's amazing "1619" magazine. I was also disappointed that Arnade's images lack any identifying information. Too many of the pictures felt like snapshots of random people and places.

If the Fallows are hyper specific about the places they visited for organizing their book, Arnade takes the opposite approach. By the end of his concluding chapter about his aborted visit to his Southern hometown, I still wasn't sure what state he was from. Still, Arnade's efforts are admirable and relatable. Trying to fit back in where we came from can be just as hard as helping people.

[Gaufre · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has the wrong title. It should be "My journey in backrow America" subtitle: "why I am such a good person". The writing is so navel-gazing it is unbearable.

The author gives us a bit of his background. He wasn't just a trader but working at an elite Wall Street bank before leaving 2012 (my emphasis - not his). He tells us all about the privileges of the people around him and why he has to quit his job. Does it sound condescending?

I also consider myself to be different from those immediately around me. I hadn't grown up wealthy. I had grown up in a tiny working-class southern town. Sure, my father was a professor of international relations, my mother a librarian, but we didn't have much money, certainly not by the standards of the NYC I was now part of. (my emphasis again)

I would say his family had plenty of money.

And the author can't seem to keep interjecting himself into the stories he wants to bring forth.

Yet seeing two dirty kids in a shopping cart jolts me; it's a visible level of despair that I hadn't seen since Hunts Point, and I can't just walk past. I go over to talk to the father

Honestly, I haven't made it very far into the book. I was trying to skip to the parts where Mr. Arnade lets the people speak for themselves but every couple of pages, I had to read his commentary.

Another thing that really bugs me is that, in what seemed like an innocuous note at the beginning, he admits that he didn't record the interviews but jotted down notes whenever he could, usually immediately after talking to people. And now this remark taints every story. Maybe the author is hearing what he wants to hear from the impression he got. How can he check?

I was genuinely interested in reading about the lives of people in back row America. But this book is more about the journey of Mr. Arnade, talking with people and finding his higher purpose. Good for him. Many people wrote books about founding themselves while walking the Appalachian trail. They didn't try to make it about the trees.

[Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

In winter 1993, journalist David Simon and ex-policeman Edward Burns began conducting what would become a full year of daily interviews on a drug corner on Fayette Street in West Baltimore. They became familiar with the residents, many of whom were heroin and cocaine addicts and drug dealers. Simon and Burns recorded their experiences and, in 1997, published them in a book called The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood . This book––one of the very best I have ever read––contains profound insights about the true nature of drug addiction and what life on the corner can teach us about America:

"We want it [drug addition] to be about nothing more complicated than cash money and human greed, when at bottom, it’s about a reason to believe. We want to think that it’s chemical, that it’s all about the addictive mind, when instead it has become about validation, about lost souls assuring themselves that a daily relevance can be found at the fine point of a disposable needle…

"This is an existential crisis rooted not only in race––which the corner has slowly transcended––but in the unresolved disaster of the American rust-belt, in the slow, seismic shift that is shutting down the assembly lines, devaluing physical labor, and undercutting the union pay scale. Down on the corner, some of the walking wounded used to make steel, but Sparrows Point isn’t hiring the way it once did. And some used to load container ships at Seagirt and Locust Point, but that port isn’t what she used to be either. Others worked at Koppers, American Standard, or Armco, but those plants are gone now. All of which means precious little to anyone thriving in the postindustrial age. For those of us riding the wave, the world spins on an axis of technological prowess in an orbit of ever-expanding information. In that world, the men and women of the corner are almost incomprehensibly useless and have been so for more than a decade now." (58-60)

More than two decades on, Chris Arnade’s Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America is proof that Simon and Burns’s plangent message fell on deaf ears. Though a very different kind of story––less exhaustive but broader in scope––Dignity is the first book to stir the same emotions in me as when I first read The Corner in 2009. This compassionate and heart-wrenching journey exposes in high definition America’s despicable treatment of its most vulnerable citizens, carrying on the honorable tradition of Simon, Burns, and many other writers and activists.

Arnade is a former Wall Street banker who quit his job in 2012 to start documenting drug addiction and poverty in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx. Over the next five years, he traveled across the United States, seeking out locations that “were poor and rarely considered or talked about beyond being a place of problems” (17). In these communities, he walked the streets and frequented churches and McDonald’s, talking to folks and taking pictures. The goal was to document “back row America,” which Arnade defines as people “fighting to maintain dignity” who have been “left behind, literally and figuratively” by an exclusive “front row” culture:

"We wanted to get ahead––and we had. We were now in the front row of everything we did, not physically but hierarchically. We were at the top of our class, we went to the top colleges and top graduate schools, and we landed jobs in the top law firms, banks, universities, media companies, tech companies, and so on…We were mobile, having moved many times before, and we would move again. Staying put was seen as failure…We were well intended, but we had removed ourselves from the lived experiences of most of the country, including the places and people we wanted to help. The vast majority of minorities and the working poor were excluded from our club––by a lack of credentials and by a system rigged against them getting any…

"If we were in the front row, they were the back row. They were the people who couldn’t or didn’t want to leave their town or their family to get an education at an elite college. The students who didn’t take to education, because it wasn’t necessarily their thing or because they had far too many obligations––family, friends, problems large and small––to focus on studying. They want to graduate from high school and get a stable job allowing them to raise a family, often in the same community they were born into.

"Instead the back row is now left living in a banal world of hyper efficient fast-food franchises, strip malls, discount stores, and government buildings with flickering fluorescent lights and dreary-colored walls festooned with rules. They are left with a world where their sense of home and family and community won’t get them anywhere, won’t pay the bills. And with a world where their jobs are disappearing." (17, 44-7)

In Simon and Burns’s terms, front row Americans occupy “an axis of technological prowess in an orbit of ever-expanding information” while the back row becomes “almost incomprehensibly useless” to a society obsessed with economic productivity and material gain. This is somewhat reductive in that it ignores “middle row” Americans––those cut off from the first row but avoiding the back row through combinations of ingenuity, grit, privilege, and luck. I suspect there is also a healthy minority of potential front row occupants who pass on certain “opportunities” because they reject the front row’s worldview and lifestyle. Nevertheless, Arnade’s core framing mechanism provides a useful way of thinking and talking about socioeconomic inequality––a companion concept to Arlie Russell Hochschild's “waiting in line for the American Dream” image from Strangers in Their Own Land .

While Dignity doesn’t break a lot of new ground content-wise, it does have one quality that sets it apart from your typical work of nonfiction: physical presentation. The hardcover edition of Dignity is an absolute pleasure to handle and peruse. Most engaging are the color pictures Arnade took during his travels, which embrace the diverse experiences of his subjects. The pictures are broken into themed sections interspersed throughout the book and are also worked into the chapters, breathing a special life into Arnade’s prose. If you decide to read this, be sure to get a hard copy; an audiobook or ebook won’t do it justice.

Like his photography, Arnade’s writing is simple and direct. He does not romanticize or dramatize the back row with unnecessary flourishes. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of back row life: the importance of McDonald’s as a “space where they could be themselves on their own terms” (38); how drugs “are a refuge” for people who produce “their own tight-knit communities” (81-2); religion’s function as a coping mechanism for those who “cannot ignore human fallibility” (119); why being told to pursue a better life by abandoning “the connections, networks, friends, family, congregations” of one’s hometown is insulting (152); racism’s historical role in creating a have and have-not geography that paves “the most dangerous” road to racial identity formation (212); and the risky, irrational acts taken by people who feel “humiliated” by their society’s “wholesale rejection that cuts to the core” (232-3). Arnade makes an effort to punctuate his narrative with reprieves of respect and perseverance, but it will surprise no one that Dignity is a grim, emotionally-draining read.

In critiquing the front row, Arnade uses himself as the main target. His expressions of humility are intelligent and genuine, as are his observations regarding the front row’s disconnectedness from the rest of the country:

"We have implemented policies that focus narrowly on one value of meaning: the material. We emphasize GDP and efficiency, those things that we can measure, leaving behind the value of those that are harder to quantify––like community, happiness, friendships, pride, and integration." (283-4)

Separated by the ruthless definitions of our unjust economic system, Arnade concludes that front and back row Americans lack the ability to understand one another. Both sides bristle with a mutual intolerance that makes it increasingly difficult for us to solve collective problems, or even to agree on what our collective problems are. He’s not big on how-to-fix-it messages (it’s not that kind of book), but Arnade does take a cursory stab at what he thinks will help:

"What are the solutions? What are the policies we should put in place? What can we do differently, beyond yell at one another? All I can say is 'I don’t know' or the almost equally wishy-washy 'We all need to listen to each other more.'

"It is wishy-washy, but that is what I truly believe, because our nation’s problems and differences are just too big, too structural, and too deep to be solved by legislation and policy out of Washington." (282)

It’s true that Americans “all need to listen to each other more.” I say this without irony or cynicism, and concur with Arnade that any positive American future depends on citizens across the nation committing to open-minded discussion and productive compromise. However, I strongly disagree that “legislation and policy out of Washington” don’t have an equally or even more important role to play. It’s likely that sweeping government action is the only thing that can get us out of this mess. It won’t happen through new programs for abating addiction, or ending homelessness, or fixing racism, or job creation, or building better education or healthcare systems. Surely we must do all of those things, but we must first eradicate, once and for all, the existential crisis of abject poverty, which is upstream of all those problems and so many more. Ending poverty would not be a silver bullet, but it would remove our single largest barrier to socioeconomic and environmental progress. And guess what? We’re the richest country in human history. We have the money. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Whether through a basic income, negative income tax, or some other form of massive wealth redistribution, America needs to dedicate more than warm words and sympathetic snapshots to aid our poorest citizens––to show each member of the back row that they’re one of us, and that a country in which everyone can flourish is preferable to one where some enjoy unchecked growth while others languish. For readers interested in digging into the numbers and arguments for abolishing poverty, I recommend Andrew Yang's The War on Normal People and Rutger Bregman's Utopia for Realists .

I can understand why Arnade doesn’t venture into this territory. Maybe he doesn’t agree with me and others who’d like to see our government fight a war on poverty, or perhaps he thinks he will reach a wider audience if he doesn’t politicize his work––probably true in these hyper-polarized times. But at a gut level, I find it perplexing that his experiences left him uninspired by (or at least ambivalent about) concrete pathways to back row revitalization. Even so, Dignity is an impactful piece of art, one that I hope will educate and motivate many of my fellow Americans.

This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.

[Nancy Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to even describe this book? Great photos and verbal portraits of what author Chris Arnade calls "the back row" of America. The writing is his personal experience, traveling through the left-behind places and meeting with people who have very little to look forward to. Although some of the people described in this book are frustrating, in general, it gives the reader some profound insights on why people are stuck in ruts and don't --- or can't -- move on. This is like putting on someone else's mocassins and walking a mile in them.
Arnade, while sympathetic to the "back row" folks, seems, oddly, to paint the "front row" which includes himself ( an ivy-league educated, Wall Street smart guy with liberal politics) with a rather broad brush. While I myself haven't rubbed shoulders with that many successful front row golden boys (or girls), the ones I have encountered have included people representing a wide spectrum of political philosophies and lifestyles, and holding a variety of religious believes including none at all.
This, however, does not detract from the book, which is a portrait of and a sympathetic study of the less fortunate/successful of us. The writer describes the arrogance of the "winners" who scoff at the religious beliefs of the less educated; as his travels progress, he comes to see the value of faith and churches for people in fractured communities and with little hope. He comes to realize that, for people with little hope of acquiring material goods or social standing, children represent their main accomplishment, and drugs and/or religion may provide both fellowship and a reason for living in a life with very little purpose otherwise.
Again and again this book comes back to my own favorite rant: our factories have closed and left desolate shells of what were once thriving towns, where people could support and family and have a decent standard of living working an honest job. What replaces the dignity that in the past was afforded by these jobs? For millions, drugs, welfare and personal dramas haven't filled that gaping hole. While the author is no Trump fan, this book does a pretty good job explaining the Trump "phenominum." Our politicians have let our People down, and if you don't believe that, take a look at the book. Multiply it by a million and there you have America's abject class.
A fascinating and impactful book.

[Tanya · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a fascinating topic, but I’d recommend Evicted (Matthew Desmond) instead. The book has good photos and I think it’s important to understand “back row” America, but I don’t think Arnade does that here. It’s basically a travelogue of a guy who got bored or confused by his (good) life, went exploring, talked to people, and developed his own problems. Lacks depth. Moves erratically.

Also, while he did not record most of the conversations and instead wrote them up immediately after, somehow he manages to use the n-word frequently. I don’t doubt that the word was used in conversation, but I find it highly problematic that the author, a white man, seemed to have no qualms in replicating its use.

[Mark Warnock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mature reflections on the author's direct observations of poor areas and people in America. Humane, sensible, and absorbing, supported by artful photography. I'm buying this for friends. Highly recommended.

[Hadrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cairo, IL. Photo by Chris Arnade.

In the early 2010s, a physicist turned bond-trader walks into the South Bronx with a camera. Stop me if you've heard this one before. By his own telling, he feels the shame or the guilt that comes with being wealthy in a time of deprivation, and gets around to conversation and taking pictures. He is so moved by the "welcoming, warm and beautiful" experience that he sets out to other neglected or ignored parts of the United States - smaller towns Midwest, Southwest, and the South. Cairo, IL, Bakersfield, CA, Selma, AL..

The photographs are uncaptioned to let them speak for themselves. The people in them are unmistakable. The painful yet not entirely gratuitous shots of those struggling with addiction. One of the most arresting photos is a needle in an arm, blood trickling out. Not all is bad, and there is some good. Sundays at church, McDonald's coffee because it's cheap and a cleaner place to socialize. The most worthwhile parts of the book are where Arnade lets people speak for themselves.

The author ventures forth from hazy documentation - around such themes as 'McDonalds' or 'Despair' to offer some suggests over how and why people live as they do. Arnade, who has academic credentials which in turn placed him in a well-compensated job, places himself at the "front row" of the society in the United States. For those others, whose lives or circumstances prevented them from holding on to the academic/career treadmill, fell behind and so were stuck, in the "back row". In previous decades, a lack of advanced education was not so much a problem - good pay for decent work was still available in manufacturing. Now what jobs are left are too strenuous or not paid well enough.

The book ends with a plea for dignity and the ability to listen to each other, an inoffensive response but I admit a lacking one. If he had some plans or a grand project for what to do, he does not reveal them here, though the narration reveals some vague distrust for what might be called the "liberal elites", or the process of higher education itself, or perhaps the idea of the "meritocracy".

The intentions seem well enough. But I have to admit a skepticism not towards the intentions of the people Arnade talks about, but what the book might become or how someone could use it as a cudgel. I have offhandedly heard comparisons to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, that famous work on tenant farmers during the Great Depression. But that book has deliberately evoked a sense of place, a sense of environment - so many pages about where the people live. Here, I only read that in parts. The discussion of the community that springs up in McDonalds - and other places where people can socialize cheaply, while still thoughtful, is one of the few places where this happens.

But elsewhere the books' experiences almost blur into each other, one place and set of people into another, the messages of poverty and isolation too indistinct to understand aside from the fact that poverty is unspeakably harsh and isolating. What do we know about where they live? Where did the author stay in all this? Perhaps it is the awful sense that looking at "us" and "them" is at best too simple a way of looking at things, and at worst a tool for demagogues. I had the awful sense that instead of understanding how this happened, that I was gawking. The people need more than a voyeur.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The results of the author's journey into many of the places you're told not to go, and his interactions with the people who live there.

The author tells of his journey as a "front row" member of America: got out of small town life, got credentialed, made money. He began interacting with people who were, as he put it, in "back row" America: no credentials, and only have one another, faith, drugs, etc. He chronicles what he saw from the Bronx to Selma, Bakersfield to Lewiston, Maine.

He finds a lot of common threads. There was work in factories, and now it's gone. People turn to drugs to cope and escape. Faith remains robust, even if it does not always produce the expected repentance. People rely on each other. McDonald's becomes the meeting house and safe haven.

It's hard to put down; the author has portrayed his subjects in a compelling and often sympathetic manner. It's an important thing for members of "front row" America to see, and a reminder of the cost of globalization and the movement of capital over the past 40 years.

The work resonated with me in many ways. The author could have just as easily visited my hometown as he did many others; I, like him, had to "get out" and now live among the credentialed class. On the other hand, I am not as successful as he, and feel more ambivalent about my departure than he does; I am undoubtedly "front row" in many respects, yet appreciate some of the community values of the "back row," and am more suspicious about the viability and health of the meritocracy and valuing people by their productivity.

The most unsatisfying part of the book is its end. After having so richly portrayed "back row" America, the author essentially shrugs and moves on. He still validated his departure and the existence of the distinctive cultures of the "front row" and "back row" Americas. Indeed, he did expect "front row" America to recognize its power and privilege and stop despising "back row" Americans and seek to understand their plight. And yet it seems the author thinks the difficulties for "back row" America are largely intractable. Those factory jobs are not coming back; he is probably accurate in thinking credentials will continue to be the required norm for the foreseeable future.

It doesn't have to be this way, but it is continuing this way since it "works" for most of "front row" America. If only we did not maintain such a failure of imagination when it comes to the rest of the country.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommend getting a physical copy with all the pictures (not the audiobook).

While not the main theme of the book, it was interesting to see at various points author Chris Arnade reevaluating his atheism in light of the religion he was encountering on the streets.

Excerpt:
P117-118: When I walked into the Bronx I was an atheist, something I was sure about. Standing years later outside the Gospel Lighthouse in Bakersfield I wasn’t so sure.
. . .
Like most in the front row, I am used to thinking we have all the answers. On Wall Street there were few problems we couldn’t solve with enough smarts, energy, audacity, or money. We even managed to push death into the distance; with enough research and enough resources – eating right, doing the right things, going to the correct medical specialist – the inevitable could be delayed, and mortality could feel distant.
With a great job and a great apartment in a great neighborhood, it is easy to feel we have nothing for which we need to be absolved. The fundamental fallibility of humans seem outdated, distant, and confined to a few distant others. It’s not hard to imagine that you have everything under control
The tragedy of the streets means few can delude themselves into thinking they have it under control. You cannot ignore death there, and you cannot ignore human fallibility. It is easier to see that everyone is a sinner, everyone is fallible, and everyone is mortal. It is easier to see that there are things just too deep, too important, or too great for us to know. It is far easier to recognize that one must come to peace with the idea that “we don’t and never will have this under control.” It is far easier to see religion not just as useful but as true.
This isn’t confined to those in poverty or on the streets; it is true for almost everyone growing up in the back row. Their communities have been shattered, their sense of place and purpose ruptured, leaving them with no confidence in “worldly” institutions and with a clearer sense of the important, value, and necessity of faith in something beyond the material.

I assume Arnade is concluding that Christianity often doesn’t have good answers for specific sufferings, but it does offer a better way for people to cope with evil and suffering.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

With a desire to talk with more strangers and have meaningful conversations, I read Dignity. This book is not even close to a guide on talking with strangers, but it did help. Reading Arnade's conversations and reflections gave me a model as to how to engage others.

Arnade, from his disillusionment of Wall Street and his experience in Hunts Point in the Bronx, records his conversations in towns across American that are either long forgotten or deemed too dangerous. And where does he look for these insights into America's lower class? McDonalds, oh and churches and bars at times. This simple act of finding a seat at McDonald's is the starting point many conversations.

What I found fascinating is how questions like: "Are you from here?" and "Do you like here?" blossomed into not only getting to know the town better, but also getting to know person answering. One of my favorite interactions from the book comes from one of these questions:

"ME [Arnade]: You like it here?
HIM [Dwain]: I am the happiest man alive. I have three boys and four grandchildren. Just tickled to death. Rural living is a different lifestyle. Who is happier? You have a family and a belly full and you are all set, that and Jesus in your life. Everything else is complications." (pp. 165-166)

Throughout the conversations he records, community and place are the values prioritized from the people who stay in these forgotten towns, people Arnade calls the Backrow of America. These Backrow values seem to be a foil for those of the Frontrow, people who are financially secure and live in major cities. Where the Backrow values community and place, the Frontrow values educational credentials and mobility. Arnade doesn't come down on whose values should reign, but only to highlight how someone might stay in a place with little economic opportunity. And when we understand the deeper values behind an action, we might show others respect.

[Alex Etheridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

What photo-journalist Chris Arnade has done here is quite amazing. Quitting his high-paying, high-profile Wall Street banking job to go into some of the poorest, most forgotten and neglected neighborhoods in America with one goal: get to know the people. This puts "back row" (his words) Americans at the forefront and highlights their hardships, dreams, and daily McDonald's-filled lives. This will open your eyes to an American that is seldom talked about outside of the drugs and violence narrative.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An impressive photography book about the poor in urban America. Hanging out at McDonalds, smoking, drugs, alcohol, are common in life. Work, lack of work, friction between newcomers and old timers are common. Lack of goals and enjoyment of life are common. A stirring account of poverty.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended.

Get a physical copy of the book to read with all the pictures (not the audiobook). The pictures add a lot.

[Alex Piacentini · Rating 3 out of 5]

.The book shines when he lets people actually speak for themselves. When he tries to diagnose or characterize whole sections of the country, he completely and utterly fails.

[Kate]

Reviewed in The Economist

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth the read to hear the compelling, often heartbreaking stories of people living on the edge of our country. This book made me want to throw myself more into pursuing justice for the oppressed and overlooked. I was shocked at how many people were eager to share their stories with the author, whose story is interesting in its own respect. I wish he had dug even deeper into fewer stories instead of taking a mile-wide, inch-deep approach. The next time I enter a McDonald's (his favorite spot to meet people) I'll consider the magnitude of the people's stories around me.

[Amy Urban · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book started off in risky territory: a person from one group (in this case: wealthy, white, liberal. America's "front row") visiting and commenting on another group (in this case: America's "back row"). But his relentless and honest understanding of this potentially problematic set up saved the book. I appreciated his insights into how one group can't really "see" another group. His honesty about how his group usually gets their information from books was refreshing. All this made me trust his sincerity. All that was necessary before I could even entertain listening to him about what he saw in those communities. I loved this book.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

It calls to mind several recent books —“Dopesick” by Beth Macy, “$2 a Day” by Kathryn Edin, “Evicted” by Mathew Ellison, among others — all of which document the profound inequality of opportunity in America, and the suffering endured by an ever widening swath of our fellow citizens amidst great wealth accruing to a small privileged few.

There are several things that make “Dignity” different. One is the use of photography. The photos are good, but somewhat disconnected from the text. I partly think this is an attempt by the author to respect the privacy of his subjects. But on the whole I would say the words are the main event here, not the images.

Another difference is the author’s status — he’s neither an academic nor a journalist, more of a talented amateur who literally wandered from a world of privilege into what he calls “back row America “. I think it’s this personal story of human curiosity and solidarity that makes the book interesting and poignant.

I enjoyed it, but would recommend one of the other more professional and comprehensive works to a first time reader. 3.5 Stars

[Jon Beadle · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Easily the best book I’ve read so far this year. Beautifully written.