The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America

"How do you talk about something that doesn’t have a name? Or something whose name is wildly broad? It might feel like trying to distinguish between lemonade and coffee when you only have the word “beverage.” That’s one of the inadequacies of talking about racism in the U.S., Barrett Holmes Pitner argues in this book. The experiences that people live through include everything from police brutality to voting restrictions to being confused for a co-worker to being told you don’t “sound Black.” Those inadequacies were brought into sharp relief during the Trump presidency, when giving a proper name to the events we saw unfolding felt both urgent and, in many cases, impossible."