Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America

by Chris Arnade

We have removed ourselves physically and in spirit, and when we do look back, it is through papers and books filled with data. We study poverty and those we left behind with spreadsheets and statistics, believing we are well intentioned, believing we are really valuing them. Instead, we are diminishing them by seeing them as simply numbers to be manipulated.

This has ensured that all those at the bottom, educationally and economically—black, white, gay, straight, men, and women—are guaranteed to feel excluded, rejected, and, most of all, humiliated. We have denied many their dignity, leaving a vacuum easily filled by drugs, anger, and resentment.