Search This Blog

Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Monday, April 17, 2017

Front Row, Back Row

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the impact of inequality on the 2016 election.

At CNN, Alexandra King reports on Brian Stelter's interview with journalist Chris Arnade:
...Arnade, a former banker who now travels across the country writing about poverty and addiction, said that his work had shown him that there are "two Americas," who look at things "really, really differently." 
It's a divide, he said, that the election of President Donald Trump had "exposed."

"The front row defines itself through its career. You can think of it that way. That's their meaning to them. Whereas the back row is somebody who if they have an education beyond high school it's been cobbled together through community colleges, through smaller state schools. And they generally work with their muscles, not their mind," Arnade told Stelter. 
Arnade said there was only one question he needed to ask during his reporting trips to tell if someone belonged to a back-row community.

"One of the biggest questions I'll ask is -- do you think your children's life will be better than yours? And is your life better than your parents'? Almost in unison, the answer is no, I don't think my children's life is gonna be better than mine," he said.