The Chokehold

Publication Title

University of Louisville Law Review

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Abstract

Eric Garner's last words, “I can't breathe” became a political slogan for Black Lives Matter. Professor Paul Butler takes it from there in his most recent book, Chokehold. Equal parts exegesis, polemic, and self-help tract, he argues that a chokehold is more than just a brutal police tactic. It is a metaphor for a host of social practices that treat Black men as criminals. In this guise, it is not just a chokehold, but “the Chokehold.” In this review, prepared for the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law's 2018 Symposium on Dismantling Structural Inequality, I suggest that there is much that Chokehold gets right. The metaphor captures how feedback loops produce racially disparate criminal justice outcomes and how this, in turn, reproduces racist notions of Black male criminality. The book does so without losing sight of the very real pain inflicted upon Black men's bodies and psyches. But the metaphor has the problem of being very particularistic, returning the reader's mind to one specific police practice. Chokehold also might have done more to underscore the moral stakes in characterizing structural racism as the Chokehold.

Comments

External Links

Westlaw

Recommended Citation

Nirej Sekhon, The Chokehold, 57 U. Louisville L. Rev. 43 (2019).

Volume

57

Issue

1

First Page

43

Last Page

59

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS