The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America
Barrett Holmes Pitner
Oct 2021 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Barrett Holmes Pitner
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13 hr 27 min
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About this audiobook
In this incisive blend of personal narrative and philosophical inquiry, journalist and activist Barrett Holmes Pitner seeks a new way to talk about racism in America.
Can new language reshape our understanding of the past and expand the possibilities of the future? The Crime Without a Name follows Pitner’s journey to identify and remedy the linguistic void in how we discuss race and culture in the United States. Ethnocide, first coined in 1944 by Jewish exile Raphael Lemkin (who also coined the term “genocide”), describes the systemic erasure of a people’s ancestral culture. For Black Americans, who have endured this atrocity for generations, this erasure dates back to the transatlantic slave trade and reached new resonance in a post-Trump world.
Just as the concept of genocide radically reshaped our perception of human rights in the twentieth century, reframing discussions about race and culture in terms of ethnocide can change the way we understand our diverse and rapidly evolving racial and political climate in a time of increased visibility around police brutality and systemic racism. The Crime Without a Name traces the historical origins of ethnocide in the United States, examines the personal, lived consequences of existing within an ongoing erasure, and offers ways for listeners to combat and overcome our country’s ethnocidal foundation.
Can new language reshape our understanding of the past and expand the possibilities of the future? The Crime Without a Name follows Pitner’s journey to identify and remedy the linguistic void in how we discuss race and culture in the United States. Ethnocide, first coined in 1944 by Jewish exile Raphael Lemkin (who also coined the term “genocide”), describes the systemic erasure of a people’s ancestral culture. For Black Americans, who have endured this atrocity for generations, this erasure dates back to the transatlantic slave trade and reached new resonance in a post-Trump world.
Just as the concept of genocide radically reshaped our perception of human rights in the twentieth century, reframing discussions about race and culture in terms of ethnocide can change the way we understand our diverse and rapidly evolving racial and political climate in a time of increased visibility around police brutality and systemic racism. The Crime Without a Name traces the historical origins of ethnocide in the United States, examines the personal, lived consequences of existing within an ongoing erasure, and offers ways for listeners to combat and overcome our country’s ethnocidal foundation.
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About the author
Barrett Holmes Pitner is a columnist, journalist, and philosopher whose work has been published in The Daily Beast, BBC, The Guardian, and elsewhere. He is the founder of The Sustainable Culture Lab, a cultural think tank with the goals of influencing policy by working with legislators and decision makers, and impacting culture at a grassroots level through events, work, and cultural offerings. He lives in Washington, D.C.
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