A growing body of literature has focused on how different states continuously “make race” by legitimizing certain racial categories while invisibilizing others. Much less has been written on the actual processes of transforming race into a bureaucratic category when implementing antiracist public policies. This article focuses on the recent use of verification commissions to validate the racial self-identification of potential beneficiaries of racial quotas at federal higher education institutions in Brazil. We argue that through their choices, particularly through their definition of what race is, of who can see race, and of how to see race, these commissions are transforming not only understandings about affirmative action’s aims but also understandings of race. The study focuses on three potential consequences of commission practices for Brazilian racial boundaries: the disciplining of racial identifications, the decontextualization of race, and the individualization of racial injustice.

越来越多的文献关注不同国家如何通过使某些种族类别合法化而使其他种族类别隐形来不断地“制造种族”。关于在实施反种族主义公共政策时将种族转变为官僚类别的实际过程的文章却少之又少。本文重点介绍最近使用核查委员会来验证巴西联邦高等教育机构种族配额潜在受益人的种族自我认同。我们认为，通过他们的选择，特别是通过他们对种族是什么、谁可以看到种族以及如何看待种族的定义，这些委员会不仅正在改变对平权行动目标的理解，而且正在改变对种族的理解。该研究重点关注委员会做法对巴西种族界限的三个潜在后果：种族认同的规制、种族的去背景化以及种族不公正的个体化。