THE ARTICLE discusses the singularity of Brazilian racism as a type of civic discrimination that is particularly important, but which, nevertheless, reflects a much broader pattern of disrespect for rights and aggressions to citizenship. Focusing on practices of discrimination in everyday life, which are stimulated by a disarticulation between the public sphere and public space in Brazil, the author identifies the potential of quotas at the symbolic level as a weapon against racism and as an assertion of citizenship.