Reflecting on racialized relations and on what it means to be Black in Brazil, based on the study of Kabengele Munanga’s proposal regarding the construction of Brazilian Black identity, in dialogue with Winnicottian thought concerning the relationship between the environmental mother and her baby and its importance in the constitution of Being, is the main objective of this work. The text dwells on the tension between the collective construction of a Black identity and the recognition of one’s own Blackness – particularly among pardo subjects who are permeated by the ideal of whitening prevailing in Brazilian thought and culture –, bringing to the fore both the relational and individual dimensions of experiences of raciality in a country that still insists on denying the racist violence that structures it.