Facing the predominant number of black children and adolescents in institutional care situation, the process of invisibility of the ethnic-racial issue was chosen as a research problem. The research field was constituted from the work in two reception units in the city of Itaguaí (RJ), under the following methodology: 1) bibliographic review, in which we identified productions that carry out an analysis on the institutional reception of children and adolescents, relating to the ethnic-racial issue and encompassing a Decolonial discussion related to the invisibility of ethnicracial topics starting in a colonizing perspective on black bodies; 2) documental analysis of the medical records of children and adolescents who were sheltered, in which we sought to identify the presence or absence of the ethnic-racial dimension in the reception space; 3) holding focus groups with workers from the reception units, the meanings attributed to the invisibility of the ethnic-racial issue. The study points to a continuous and constant process of invisibility of the ethnic-racial issue, considering institutional and structural racism. The professionals consulted identify that most children and adolescents are black, but the social issue overrides the issue of race, without understanding that these markers are closely related.