A report entitled Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women underscores the paucity of research examining police violence toward Black women. This study focused on how valuing a White police officer and symbolic racism moderate reactions when the officer fatally shoots a Black or White woman during a traffic stop. At high levels of officer valuing, symbolic racism was positively associated with perceptions the victim presented a threat to the officer, but negatively associated with support for punishing the officer and perceived victim compliance; these associations were stronger when the victim was Black relative to White. At low officer valuing levels, there was no variability in the link between symbolic racism and the outcome variables as a function of victim race. Implications for bias in judicial outcomes for the victim and officer are discussed.
Keywords: Black women; jury selection; police; symbolic racism; violence.