It is often stated that racism has disappeared and is as much a part of the past as the system that gave rise to it - colonialism - however, discrimination against the Afro-descendant population persists and is part of daily life.

After the abolition of slavery, racism in Latin America and the Caribbean took on an informal and symbolic character, contrary to the formal and segregationist drift it had in the United States; Therefore, this form of discrimination has developed more subtle, almost imperceptible, but also more effective mechanisms through which to maintain itself.

According to this, in the region, racial discrimination manifests itself in incisive questions about origin, distrust in public and private spaces, ridicule and disqualification due to skin color, placing people under suspicion and unjustified searches by security bodies; the folklorization, trivialization and ridicule of black culture, the exclusion from the formation of social groups, the differential treatment, and the difficulties in establishing affective relationships of an interracial or endorracial nature under the promotion and exhortation to "improve the race."