The Crime Without a Name

A personal and philosophical journey to find the language needed to describe, combat, and transcend racism, and to cultivate previously unimaginable solutions to society’s divisions and systemic inequalities.

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. 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. Dating back to the transatlantic slave trade and reaching new resonance in a post-Trump world, Black Americans have endured this atrocity for generations.
 
The Crime Without a Name guides readers through:
  •  The historical origins of ethnocide in the United States
  •  The author's personal, lived consequences of existing within this ongoing erasure
  •  Ways to combat and overcome America's ethnocidal foundation
  •  How new language can reshape our understanding of the past and expand the possibilities of the future
 
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 offers readers the historical origins of ethnocide in the United States, while examining the personal, lived consequences of existing within an ongoing erasure.