Race is conceptually understood in this text as a social construct with the ideological function of hierarchizing people and human populations through their homogenization, established according to arbitrary phenotypic criteria, which would be associated with moral, cognitive, and civilizational attributes. Emerging in the European colonial context and consolidated as a scientific doctrine in the nineteenth century, racial thought naturalizes and justifies socially constructed inequalities through the hierarchization and ontologization of differences. Thus, race must be understood as a social category of discrimination that structures racism, a complex historical system of production, justification, and maintenance of inequality between racialized and dominant groups. This article discusses the roots, transformations, and contemporary uses of the concept, as well as the epistemological and political debates that surround it, including its validity as an analytical tool or criterion in public policy. Being dynamic and relational, this category remains central to understanding and confronting various forms of inequity prevailing in today’s world.