WashPost

My first exposure to Paul Butler’s writing was at a legal conference in 1995. I volunteered at the last minute to review a law review article of his when the person assigned to the paper could not attend the meeting. In the now-famous piece, Butler detailed the harsh criminal sentencing blacks face. He reviewed the centuries-old practice of nullification — in which juries vote not guilty because they think a law is unfair — and boldly encouraged jurors to nullify in cases involving blacks accused of low-level drug offenses. When I finished, I scribbled, “Well done” and “Tenure?” on the first page. After publication, the article generated a firestorm of controversy, including calls for Butler’s job.

With “Chokehold: Policing Black Men,” his new book, Butler has hit his stride. This is a meditation, a sonnet, a legal brief, a poetry slam and a dissertation that represents the full bloom of his early thesis: The justice system does not work for blacks, particularly black men. With this performance, though, Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University, layers in statistics, quotes from academics, rap lyrics, research findings and personal narratives. It’s a raucous mix, drawing on a range of voices, including Michelle Alexander, Susan Sontag, the movie “The Mack,” Derrick Bell, James Comey, Black Star, Ronaldinho Gaucho, Michel Foucault, Langston Hughes and Touré.

In Butler’s usage, the chokehold, the sometimes fatal neck lock police use to coerce submission, is a metaphor for understanding how racial oppression functions in the U.S. justice system. The chokehold is the invisible fist of the law, a shapeshifter that represents iterations of racial oppression, including slavery, Jim Crow, racial profiling and mass incarceration — and all the other ways the law works to keep black men down. “Efforts to fix ‘problems’ such as excessive force and racial profiling are doomed to fail,” Butler writes. The system works as it was designed to work: The chokehold persists, regardless of the century, the race of the president or good intentions. Butler’s goal is to define, describe and ultimately dismantle the chokehold’s grip. [more]