The Crime Without a Name, Barrett Holmes Pitner
The Crime Without a Name, Barrett Holmes Pitner
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The Crime Without a Name
Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America

Author: Barrett Holmes Pitner

Narrator: Barrett Holmes Pitner

Unabridged: 13 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/12/2021


Synopsis

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Heather

Full review will be in Booklist. I am so impressed with this fresh take on what American racism has wrought— a linguistic and philosophical exploration. This is definitely unlike anything I’ve read before on racism and American culture which is the reason I give it 5 stars.......more

James Baldwin once wrote “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” In The Crime Without a Name, Barrett Holmes Pitner makes a compelling and forceful case that nothing can be faced until it is named. Pitner investigates America’s caustic inability t......more

Goodreads review by Makeda

A fantastic microscope looking into American Culture. A crime without a name acknowledges the suffering of so many while not dismissing the accountability of those who have inflicted that suffering. It is an extremely fresh take that navigates a journey of linguistic and philosophical ideas that app......more

Goodreads review by Anton

Great, insightful, and somehow fresh feeling take on racism and the destruction of culture in America. This book focuses on the linguistic and philosophical implications of America's genesis and continued ethnocide and is at its most interesting when it explores the lack of language America has to a......more

This book should be required reading for every US college junior or senior and for every adult--especially those caught in the throes of white fragility. Part social analysis, part memoir, and part (accessible) intro to German philosophy, Pitner rationally and deftly demonstrates the dystopia that i......more