This article aims at providing a possible reading of the reality of racism in Brazil in which laughter plays a relevant mediating role. Inserted among distinct realities - psychic and social, conscious and unconscious, playful and serious -, the laughter, as a by-product of racist jokes, can articulate these realities in such a manner as to contribute to concealing and consolidating the existing racism in Brazil. Its effect may be obscured as a consequence of a public debate in which laughter itself becomes the object of the discussion.
laughter; racist joke; unconscious; Brazilian racism