Abstract

DA SILVA FERREIRA, Andreza S.; DA COSTA SILVA, Khalil; CAMINO, Cleonice  and  ROSAS TORRES, Ana Raquel. Positioning toward police violence against Black and White suspects. Cienc. Psicol. [online]. 2022, vol.16, n.2, e2520.  Epub Dec 01, 2022. ISSN 1688-4094.  https://doi.org/10.22235/cp.v16i2.2520.

This study investigated whether the skin color of the victims of police violence influenced the arguments used in the face of this type of violence. 105 residents of João Pessoa (Brazil) participated in this study (age M = 25.31; SD = 7.5). A questionnaire with a fictitious report was used, in which the suspect of committing an assault had been seriously attacked by a police officer. In one condition, it was mentioned that the suspect was white and, in another, that he was black. Participants were asked to write a text justifying their views on the event. The responses were analyzed using Iramuteq. When the suspect was white, most of the positions (65 %) disagreed with the police action, justifying that the use of violence was illegal or arbitrary. When the suspect was black, most of the positions were in agreement with the use of violence (51.43 %), justifying it as a kind of punishment of the suspect and as a necessary procedure given the ineffectiveness of Justice in fighting against the crime. It was concluded that the position in the face of police violence is one of the expressions of discrimination against blacks and contributes to the maintenance of racial hierarchies in Brazil.

Keywords : prejudice; racial discrimination; police violence; racialized relations; textual analysis.

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