Despite democratization of the Brazilian political system during the 25 years following the end of military rule, the foundations of Brazil’s democracy have to be described as “precarious”, contributing to a “disjunctive democracy” (Holston 2008), characterized by networks of corruption and clientelism, state violence and an extremely unjust distribution of and access to wealth and territory. Through a constant rewriting of Brazil’s nationhood as an imagined community with a supposedly “racial democracy”, the historical roots of this “disjunctive democracy” have been marginalized for a long time. However, the legacy of colonial practices – including the slave trade – can still be perceived today, for example through spatial arrangements tied to a specific form of ethnic segregation. This issue is discussed by social movements but not placed at the heart of public debate, which tends to subsume Brazil’s social and spatial inequalities, as well as patterns of segregation, under the issue of public insecurity.