The work consists in evaluating public policies to combat racism, more specifically those of a punitive character, and its effectiveness as a mechanism for promoting racial equality. Result of long political struggle by black militants, the criminalization of racism is, for them, an important normative framework to combat racial discrimination. For others, the penal system, having racist support base, could not serve as a path to the emancipatory project of black men and women in Brazil. The limitations and possibilities of using the law to defend the identities of sound conformation appears as question needed to deal with this tension. From the approximation of categories of analysis used by the Theory of Recognition and the Critical Criminology, aims to formulate a theoreticalpractical guide for articulating appropriate legal measures to demands for recognition.