Review by Booklist Review
People are generally familiar with the term genocide, coined by Jewish refugee Raphael Lemkin after the Holocaust, to name violent mass atrocities against specified groups. However, Lemkin's ethnocide--genocide's twin word--remains obscure. Journalist Pitner's central thesis, that "American society lacks the language to describe itself, and as a result it is incapable of diagnosing and rectifying its own destruction," centers on ethnocide, which describes a nation encompassing a people (as opposed to annihilating them) but erasing their culture in order to exploit their presence. Because no language exists to properly convey how racism has decimated American culture, Pitner draws on European philosophy movements to fill the linguistic void and analyze its bleak, often paradoxical effects. His philosophical explorations build on and circle back to each other to form a cohesive, effectively structured analysis. Narrative moments from Pitner's personal journey toward understanding ethnocide provide a human story balancing his profound linguistic analysis. Pitner's insightful, entirely original argument provides a fascinating new way to understand American national culture and to reclaim identities suppressed by ethnocide.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist and philosopher Pitner debuts with an erudite if uneven look at how systemic racism imperils Black and Indigenous cultures in the U.S. Drawing on Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin's coinage of the terms genocide and ethnocide in the 1940s to describe Nazi atrocities against Jewish people, Pitner repurposes the latter term to denote "the destruction of a people's culture while keeping the people." The goal of ethnocide, he argues, is "perpetual oppression, exploitation, and inequality," and he traces its history in America from the transatlantic slave trade to the Jim Crow South and Donald Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric and policies. Mixing philosophy, politics, and memoir, Pitner discusses Marxist and Hegelian dialectics, the "ethnocidal terror" faced by his Gullah Geechee ancestors in South Carolina, and the links between modern-day gun culture in the U.S. and the legacy of slavery. Intriguing historical tidbits, such as how the spiritual "Kum Bah Yah" lost its original meaning as a call for God to rescue the Gullah people, buttress Pitner's analysis, but his optimistic conclusion that ethnocide is "unsustainable" runs counter to his central argument that it is baked into American culture. Still, this is a well-intentioned and often incisive examination of the forces of inequality. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
The crime does have a name: ethnocide is a term first coined in 1944 by Jewish exile Raphael Lemkin, who also coined the term genocide. It references the effort to destroy a people's ancestral culture, as seen in the suppression of African culture in America, beginning with the transatlantic trade and enslavement of Africans; the term has taken on new urgency in light of recent Black Lives Matter protests. Journalist Pitner examines the history of ethnocide in this country, then explains what it's like to endure the erasure of one's culture and how we can all combat its consequences, especially through how we use language.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Black writer argues that the American inability to face the nation's racist past is directly related to a lack of vocabulary to describe the violence of White supremacy. Pitner, the founder of the Sustainable Culture Lab, begins his cogent analysis by introducing the word ethnocide, a term created by Polish Jewish refugee Raphael Lemkin, who immigrated to the U.S. to escape the horrors of World War II. Unlike genocide, which Lemkin also coined, ethnocide describes the practice of erasing "a people's culture while keeping the people," a term the author says perfectly describes American slavery. Pitner argues that naming this violence not only gives us the tools to properly digest the atrocities wrought upon Black bodies throughout history, but also to face what must be done to repair American society. To complement the concept of ethnocide, the author presents a few other terms that may be unfamiliar to readers, including polderen, a Dutch word that "articulates the importance of equality and an attachment to place when forging culture," and poshlyi, a Russian word for vulgarity, which Pitner uses to articulate the damage wrought by Donald Trump and his administration. The author ends the book by discussing naissance and ethnogenesis, both of which he uses to describe the generation of new, more equitable cultural practices that he hopes can redefine the U.S. At its best, this heavily researched book shimmers with creativity and intelligence, expertly balancing realism, optimism, and honesty. At times, though, it can be difficult to keep track of the barrage of terminology, especially since a new word is introduced almost every chapter. Additionally, Pitner draws almost exclusively from White, male, European philosophers; one of the few exceptions is Gandhi, whose problematic attitudes regarding race make him a curious choice for a book that celebrates Black resilience. A mostly well-argued, deeply felt treatise on the links among language, racism, and redemption. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
