good evening. thank you everybody for coming. i'm a visiting fellow at the american enterprise in state and also commentary editor of the washington examiner and we had a great discussion tonight. we have brought here the author of dignity which came out earlier this year and it's an excellent book. i read it and i love it and we are going to be something afterwards. you should buy it. it's beautiful and i say that because it is also a photo book as well as a great collection of

stories that revealed america. so, chris is the first guy i've had on this page with a phd in physics and he used a phd in physics to go into finance and when he had this job in finance, he had gone for a walk during the day and i will abridge the story because it is in the book. the walks got longer and longer and he ended up at hunts point it isn't as close to the financial district. and there he was exposed to what he called the back row of america. drug addicts, drug dealers, prostitutes and convinced him that he needed to figure out what was going on across the country. so, from maine to bakersfield california, he traveled the country to talk to people and again come he wasn't doing the same sort of going around the country trip that a lot of people do.

it was the drug addicts, drug dealers, prostitutes, the homeless, a formerly homeless, veterans, people who hated the immigrants and all of that. but then recently if you follow twitter, you'll know that he has visited the most affordable group of old which is conservatives. but he's gone far lower visiting the tax cutters. but again i do recommend this book and i want to start with the most in the discussion here is introspection into the mindset now here we are at eei almost all the scholars have advanced degrees, here we are in washington, d.c. to the arguably wealthiest in the country and the most educated region in the country so i want to start with

i am a catholic and they are most directed at the audience you talk about the denigration of the front-row of the non- credentialed meaning. in other words people finding meaning outside of degrees and a nice house. so can you talk to us about what you found around the country in that regard lacks >> to the degree my book is political or sociological but i would say is i divided the world to front-row and back row and

people who live in the bronx and those in portsmouth. people who don't go to college or as they go to college to go to state school or community college. the contrast of that is my prayer life and i spent 20 years as a bond trader is what i call the bond trader people who look different and come from all over the world, come from all over the u.s. but share a common theme in that they've been through the same institutions, harvard, princeton, yale, post graduate degrees, internships, maybe moving to new york city or dc but only certain neighborhoods and only certain ones in dc.

and they run the world. we set the rules and run the law firms and the academies and universities. one of the things we've done is define a very early on which it is we onlisthe only look at mats and in particular how much you get, how much economic capital. those that find meaning in more traditional ways and things you don't need a resume for.

where the value of living in the same neighborhood, the value of the friendship you form in the neighborhood. i always laugh when i think about it started hitting me when i was visiting people and they would interview them i remember telling somebody they had been born 20 miles down the road 68, 78 so you've lived in this town all of your life. i'm from a mile outside of care

cairo. there is a lot of value in place and another thing that matters that doesn't require credentials is religion faith and a third is race. these are things that effectively you can walk, things that give you meaning and value that we cannot quantify. we can't measure it at all so i think that over time have assumed don't have value because we can't measure it so we tell people just move. go from a to b.. the way we think about the world is a narrow framework of only one thing that matters and that one thing that matters is a

resume, education and how much money you make. >> it is a measurablis immeasurs harder to measure where you're from, community bond, state, etc. and that is something that i've seen admitted. when she saw the book, she really didn't like it and none of her friends did because it was emphasizing things that were so vague white community bonds and they were looking for other ways to measure success or value or anything like that also the strikes of people is arbitrary. there was an article that had the headline loyalty is tom and people constantly talk about the accident of where they were born and we can say, you and i could say it is unfortunate that the

accident can determine your outcome but the accident of where they were born doesn't seem like an accident or something to be swapped off. it seems unwise, inefficient. >> we devalue them because we cannot measure them and again, we are a quantitative bunch of different though. that's how we think about the policy. when i think about the whole moving, going back to where i disagree with all the conservatives i think it is awful and the way we think about the front-row and free trade, it is a trade-off. we can't measure the losses.

on a spreadsheet the losses look like a factory gone in milwaukee. but in real life, it destroys communities which destroy families and have kids born out of wedlock but then also more than that it takes away people's meaning. that was their center of the universe being able to live and stay there for having downtown bars and that i think you can measure it. it is the way to measure the fact that the effects of the free trade has not been sort of distributed evenly across the country. when the factory shuts down, a lot more happened than just the money flowing in.

>> the other thing was the iteration of the solution was just to move. it comes from the right by the way, it was so offensive like not only is the pragmatic but people don't necessarily want the money to move and you're asking them to sell their assets. this is the question i have been around talking about alienated america is sure that these people move. you spend more time talking to people and you look around and it's hard to see. you and i both move to places where we have the best job opportunities. new york, dc. it's hard to say if you care about this person in a town where there are no jobs and drugs are running rampant and it's almost like why would you. >> what i would say to them is

doing speaking to them isn't so much the policy people that assume moving is easy and also assume it has no cost. i referenced this all the time, but in the bucket is a perfect example. an african-american woman i met a mcdonald's in east la who was staying in east o east la to goe local communion community college and she was staying there to be her mom's translator. her mom is a first generation liklike a lot of older immigran, she does documents for her mother. like why do we think, why should we think that that is the right decision in my mind in many ways. why should we expect people to be able to sell their assets at these low prices and also both have value and it is elitist because they don't require money to have those. those are things that they are

gifted at birth. and to take those away from people is essentially extraordinarily elitist. so if i am here and people know me and bracket and part of it is in 20 years i've put in work and i've had jobs and i've been involved in i've written about and that helps you to get these credentials and give meaning to your known for having been around for whatever it is that a one of the words is tribalism and i think it's important as it has become such a negative word we know what you mean by that but after i read a column about

how the fishermen are wanting to leave and a just caring about that and he described his group of friends and how much they were going to lose because they were old constantly traveling to the rest of europe and enjoying the food from the rest of europe and he was describing the tribe as you described it learning as much as we could. our community was global so in other words the front-row diatribe seemed to try to think that the bush tribalism and tribalism is actually necessary is my argument coming and i don't know if you agree, people need to want to belong to tribes. the way that i phrase it is people need to be a valued member of something larger than themselves. if that is a church group, if it

is a law firm, a bowling league people need to be a valued member. the front-row view talk about we are at the end group the cool kids and they set this up and no one in the end group likes to see themselves as being part of the end group like i don't have privilege, what are you talking about. i don't have an apartment, that isn't privilege. so, the title of my biggest dignity because when you've taken these things away from people, when you take them on credential innings and make people think the figure in a rat race to build a resume and give money, that is humiliating

looking for dignity and there are many. it is a double-edged sword. it can be positive and you can find dignity and i see in the pigeon keeping you find dignity as a member of the community or raising familracing family but o the undignified ways we would rather. there is negative consequences to that and i think some of it you've seen politically these days they are very much long

resume. >> the argument i make in the book is a big part of the phenomenon is people seeking to belong. the framework that i use is belonging to something and my argument is that in the suffering parts of america what is lacking a. so i looked at a lot of these places and i saw the pool closed down, the church that is )-close-paren, the factory closed down and you still get food stamps and disability or unemployment and whatever that adds up to a.

sometimes it is just wearing the red hat these people don't belong to anything and they are seeking to but it's a bitter irony i think for a lot of the political left and there is a handful of liberal writers i thought they were a more secular country can't we all get along because the they wouldn't have t ththe just additions but if they belong to the church which is the most successful for the working class and the middle class then more people were going to belong to things that in one way or another will cause more strife or not leave them towards happiness that is my argument. >> there are variations.

the. it's not my strong point and socially comfortable saying this to someone as an eval of

agnostic it doesn't have the levels of despair that the others have. and the reason being is the church is there. if both regulates and provides people a sense of place. all of the church has been a big loss and in many cases it's capitalism plus religion in this

tug-of-war you don't go too far because you've got those religious rules. capitalism without religion is a disaster. >> as he put it he didn't know his abcs and he said he always felt dumb, never felt he had meaning and as he put it grant t if you can't read, you know, if you have the wrong views it's

hard to find meaning. i want to move on. i will come back to make it. we had the same experience. i think surprisingly you'd use the phrase of people that were left behind in dignity there was an interview on fox.com where there was a professor are doing something similar to what i would argue and the interviewer interjected and said these people haven't been left behind. they've chosen not to keep up with. i think something about the white working-class voting for donald trump especially in the republican primary has created a situation where a lot of people

would otherwise look at people suffering especially if they lost their jobs due to free trade and have sympathy but it's left to people saying you are responsible for your own suffering which by the way is a lot of what you hear from the right about urban blacks. a did i see the group of people suffering the social ills if i will never blame these qualities i will blame the political structure that updated. i won't call them racist. i think you have to look at the political structures to see the decisions without the individual level and the group level.

the left has always rightfully done that about urban neighborhoods. when the right says welfare in all thosandall those things, lat get a job. addicted to having kids, violence, crime and that the left is a wake-up to look at the situation they find themselves in an neighborhoods facing immense obstacles because of racism. i think that they would do the same to the working class and in some cases they do in many cases, they don't. when they look at the problems were the choices made a it's like these people have privilege.

with a family that had done a lot of wrong in their lives. i forget the context that i basically said something about privilege.

compared to the kids in milwaukee. a it's uncomfortable because it makes people in my party feel a little bit like they have the privilege of it means connecti connection. in college i read homer and read

greek and a few things i absolutely loved. but you met some of my older brothers who one of them went to a much better college and i did and maybe he learned calculus or computer programming. but what helped him as he went to jail and when he dropped off he had friends who went to get a job and that education isn't just who you meet in college but it's also learning the code, how to interact, how to speak, not to get a tattoo. all these things like are not nt exclusively talk t to u. but u.u absorb them and it's what they were able to pass on a standardized test is a code of behavior and its connection and that is the nature of our privilege and accepting that is

uncomfortable. >> we are the cool kids. we set the rules both culturally and economically and with that comes of these memberships that you don't really know you have. i think to me the bigger issue is and there are two of them. one, we talk about the connection. there was an african-american gentleman in the project the prn cleveland because of a full scholarship at vanderbilt back in the 70s. i wish someone had told me it was about making connections.

when he got there he studied in also have to make up he had a lesser education say he spent all the time reading the books into fatal came out. to me what is the most frustrating about where and education divides people is it really allows the way to silence the voice of a. this whole idea this is wearing very much contrary to people on the right which is this whole kind of expertise so that you are not allowed to speak on something unless you have a

resume that allows you to speak on it. and then from the left you're not allowed to speak unless you know the proper words to use. it's frustrating because of the issues that are particularly topical right now that the r. language sensitive, i found that the working class has a lot to say about it and it isn't as negative as the educated class would assume. they are pretty understanding of getting to this new place. they are going to be pounced on and called uneducated, dom,

sexist, so they just give up. so for me it is very frustrating to it's to actually let people speak to their own so i try to put as much of the book and the dialogue as possible to let them speak without the jumping into protecting them. >> i really enjoy that part of the book. if there is a part i wish that you drill down on more it is a contradiction between your boat and alienated america which i wrote about how the affliction of the suffering parts of the country wit was a lack of thingo belong to a lack of places to get connected and i don't mean connections at connections to your neighbor and sense of

belonging. but it's even in the rubble people were finding these connections come even if you have a picture of an amazing sight to the gig if you know much about the, i am the mcdonald's guy. it ithere's not much to show physically. for the same reasons a lot of

people pupeople wouldn't go into mcdonald's but i started hanging out over time. they went to mcdonald's over time because of the free wifi but most importantly you could just hang out there so i started spending a lot of time there hanging out and i started seeing friendships forming and the communities there and morning groups and people who go there before their weddings. [laughter] it's basically the town center is one of the few places it's like the town square people are playing dominoes and reading and everything.

i need to people and they can't believe it. i was seeing so much community to the point i was in denial and take them out of mcdonald's and take a photo of them. a and then i realized mcdonald's was a story handed to me i always say think about what it was formed as entirely for transactional in and out so the way i say is evidence of two things. people are that desperate in the community so you give people these franchises are. i don't see it as different than

what you saw. i see it as i think maybe we went to different places where there wasn't anything but sometimes they mcdonald's. going back to my title, that's belonging and a desire for dignity it is evidence of that. people have romantic relationships. part of my argument is the lack of trust in other words you go into a town and they will talk about the outsiders whether it be immigrants or the political class or china destroying their town but then i also think that there's less social trust.

different places are going to be different and there's going to be poor places where people leave their bikes on the front yard that you are talking about people in the street corners with guns, guys getting shot at by washington lobbyists. even in selma the problem is the police dogs, the main threat to their life it is going to be the fact that the social fabric has broken down so much that what they are engaging in for commerce is going to be warfare. drugs and so i think i have a different view on this.

i spent a lot of time in drug houses and with drug dealers and so it wa it would've been if tho down but i also spent 20 years in wall street and soul of the things go down so to me it's simply their legal system. if you screw me over in wall street i'm going to layer up and it will all be very pleasant and they don't have that option. i spent a lot of time around

drug dealers. it's the option you have so you go with the option you have. i'm not encouraging. i'm just saying i would reframe it as looking at it as a functional system. the outside system isn't functional for them they are going to create their own functional system. it's like what i find fascinating is the opposite which is even in the most destitute situations, people form rules in order to. i find it fascinating people

self organize. >> when people are deprived of if they seek it more. sometimes it will be something that we might think is better for them. >> i want to make one more point on that. there's also owning the stigma. eventually they will say yes that is me. that's what they do is own the addiction. you start owning the stigma.

>> use a url of the one privilege you are about to end its fine to have ethnic identity, racial identity as meaning in that and i sometimes wonder if it comes from the loss of ethnic identity. they say knowing just american.

the lack of ethnicity and religion in people seeking some other form of identity. how i saw it flipped on its head in a negative way.

talking about the cultural capital and majorities. if you identify as polish no one would hold that against you. i think that we still have these difficulties because people would say there are the days when they beat up the polish kids with the jewish kids but i do think that whiteness is replacing other identities. >> french-canadian american, to get my-sprite, they were the most likely to be trump voters. but i will say to this point is when i go back to the performance meeting place and grace, i always say it like then there's materialism resume so you have to choose one of the

four. it's like a one of the forms of meaning is going to be chosen by people because people with nothing or going to choose something. so it is kind of like the rug in the room. you try to push one down it pops up someplace else. i have heard of racial identity is the most dangerous one for the people to start seeking meaning in because all of the obvious reasons. but my warning has always been to the left and to the elites if you stop, if you keep devaluing face and place and upping the ante making this kind of rat race of the building going to universities, you are going to get the backlash that's going to go to race and it's going to happen very quickly. so, what frustrates me sometimes is racism can advance low.

i don't know if you know lewiston, a town in maine that 30,000 people lost its textile mills to mexico and others. and then some somali americans came and replaced 98 and then some others so i spent some time there. i was talking to a professor of anthropology who said she studied this issue and said one of the things you will see us when someone is visually different they seem to be jumping the line that's when you get a big swing by the majority. speaking of joining they have what's called members only clubs

that were organized around the mills. the one i went to was organized around monthly snowshoe races that all the mills would go empty into the club and they did a snowshoe racing. for those who think that the membership is there to keep african-americans have, anyways, i'm talking to this guy next to me who had a rough life. in his mind he was a vietnam vet. alcoholism, in and out of segregated housing and he goes off on a tirade really nasty.

the bartender actually stopped and says no, somalis are great. the interesting thing is when we spoke he literally started complaining about jumping the queue for getting free food. it was literally doubled. ..

>> the microphone will be brought to you. so quickly identify yourself with the name. so what is your endgame that you are not the journalist? so you have done this for eight years so what is your end goal? is it where your mind is that.

where is peoples directed at? to the local state senate counsel? broad national issues? >> good question my wife would like me to answer that as well. [laughter] >> honestly the project was haphazardly done at some point it was motivated by political theater with people who are routinely disparaged in the press with the stereotypes they are wonderful people. and let them tell their

stories as i saw them so what was the second question? the anger is diffuse sometimes you put the pothole in front of your yard and it doesn't get fixed so there is a tendency to want to punch the more masculine you are the more you want to punch i think the degree of anger is a broad sense you are being patronized all the time you are not worthy you're being laughed at. they know they are convinced of this that people make fun

of them like the new york times or "washington post" would rather not spend time with them. so it's because it is hard to know and it's hard for me to know who to punch when you are that removed from the process it's hard to know who to punch and who are you mad at. >> i would say i was surprised at how easy it was to get people to talk to me about their life. and that he should tell them where they are going and and

then soon talking about the mother's time in rehab and then you have to get them to stop talking. i've been at applebee's at 2:00 o'clock in the morning with the wrongs that cause the truck to flip people want to talk if they distrust a guy from brooklyn in the abstract , where i think the narrative, i hate the word but the general dominant story is wrong is the idea that they don't hate the rich. they are frustrated they are not there but in particular

1241 - - trumps form of wealth is understandable i can make mocking articles in the wall street journal how he is a business failure he didn't beat the s&p but for a lot of people out there they understand that that is what money is. so a lot of people i did a silly thing i get the financial times and is called with how to spend it. [laughter] i forget my how to spend it was in my car and people were literally shooting up over the how to spend it. eventually said i did this silly project what do you think about this? and they all loved it like

what you seeing on left wing of twitter. this is outrageous the $50000 rolex watch. so it would be wrong. i don't like the wealthy it is aspirational and more of i could do that. >> another question. >> there seems to be a gap in your awareness and if you are working in finance you should be aware the industry of consolidating there are not as many bond trading jobs. you are actually in the situation you are just more educated but in a different bracket but you don't seem to

be aware of that and it is a lot. for example people working in the coal industry in west virginia have long-term jobs as a bond trader they will milk you for everything you are worth 22 years old and then you are out you don't sue the banks you can't just lawyer up. you are the same person. >> i'm not saying there's not a lot of problems with the banking industry. but if you are in the front office or the back office, it's a very different industry and back office and the front. and they treat the back office like crap. it's not a nice industry. >> it is a peerless industry to be in, but the main

privilege is connection and belonging and i think if i got laid off there are no jobs in journalism there are people with money with other things that i could turn to at least try to land on my feet and that is a lot harder when everybody you know is in that town. my experience was at the very top this very elite group a very nasty group. >> so what most surprised you of your interactions and your experience? >> the openness, honestly

, don't take this that way but i spent most of my time in african-american neighborhoods. nobody tried to rob me or take anything from me. i was walking around with a 5000-dollar camera. little scruffier than this. and that drug houses at 2:00 a.m. i walk into abandoned buildings at 3:00 o'clock in the morning. just on a lark because somebody said i should go there and nothing bad happened. i remember once, it's very different for females. an entirely different world out there. but in terms of the safety issue and the trust, there is

a woman by the name of millie on the street at 2:00 a.m. she's a sex worker. back to where people tell you their story and she told me the whole story. three years later she passed away and i located her body we die in new york without papers you are put into hart island one of the worst things in the worl world. it is a poppers grave 1 million people are buried there poppers island since 1965. they put you in a trench and bury you. so she died and over six months i located it i found

where she was at the time they put her in hart island and through the whole process to get her exhumed are properly buried i learned a lot about her past i don't go into people's past elicits to get the paperwork done to get the body exhumed so three years later everything she told me at two in the morning a complete stranger i actually fact checked it for a whole story she had told me she did not lie or exaggerate. and the honesty and it wasn't a good life or something to be proud of. and at the individual level people are decent and

aggregate so the us paradox and individually not and individually friendly. [laughter] >> another question. >> my name is kelly are you still traveling to interview people and the second question is have you ever found the one from the command on - - community that found their way out i am curious what you said and with that language to fit in with that front row. >> i know people in my past life as a banker have done that and have played the long odds and succeeded but on the

streets in the project of my bronx was focused the road apiece saying that nobody got out there was no happy endings and i just got a text message and that beauty is doing whatever they do and shelley and ramon but then again one of the things that is uncomfortable to me to think about is why do some people succeed in some don't? some people just make it out and you meet them and there is a young girl i met in the

church i hope she will make it out but at seven or eight she would leap every hurdle and do what she needed to do to get out. and when i met people like that on wall street who came from nothing and succeeded but i knew that for what i wanted. i don't know if it is teachable or whatever but to the question if i'm still doing it, and taking a break but without a camera but no real goal other than just to see intellectually. so talk about getting out

reminds me of a conversation i had in my book from prince george's county and he said he has horrible self-contradiction of the people who were showing up in his community will be the most engaged those are most likely to go out to actively love their neighbor and care about their place and to some extent where he is from success is getting out. imagine that success from the pastor. he is there for life. he doesn't want the brightest girl to get out. he wants her to be a leader in the community. but if he cares about her individually, he does want her to get out and isn't that the horrible paradox we are in? so in 1950 you're more likely

to be there and be the principle of the public school and now if she does anything worth her talent and energy it will be getting up. >> so when they ask about talking to people if they want to leave, leave and go to college but it's not my place to tell someone. but what i do say is if you go to college, don't go into debt. do it on the cheap get scholarships that people don't want to leave and you can't stop them. >> we are selling copies of the book outside.

thank you very much for doing this work and at the beginning is that i'm a christian and a catholic and our duty is to love our neighbors and care for these to tell the stories is a great example of that. thank you. thank you to chris for joining us. [applause]

boat their tab on booktv.org. >> good afternoon, good evening happy shrove tuesday thank you for spending your tuesday with us i am the executive director of the institute for human ecology it has been here for over three years now. ross is an important member