Resisting Cultural Erasure in America

Ethnocide, a word 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. 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 today. Join us for a conversation with author Barrett Holmes Pitner and historian Jennifer Fang on ethnocide in America, and its particular impacts on Black and Chinese Americans, who have endured that erasure for generations. Pitner and Fang will discuss the personal lived consequences of existing within an ongoing erasure—and how to combat it.

Presented in partnership by Never Again Coalition, Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, Portland State University’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies Project, WorldOregon, The Immigrant Story, Japanese American Museum of Oregon, Portland Chinatown Museum, Five Oaks Museum, Native Arts and Culture Foundation

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