This article highlights the discursive contradictions present in state social interventions linked to social action when referring to socially vulnerable and/or impoverished Black and indigenous people. Firstly, it will analyze the discourses of those intervening about the proposals for the implementation of mechanisms of preferential access or of ethnoracial exclusivity of beneficiaries in programs to combat poverty. Secondly, it will explore their epistemic resistance to the incorporation of 'racial group' or 'skin color' as selection criteria. In doing so, the article aims to propose that institutions of social well–being need to transform and that social services should adapt to the demands of cultural diversity, adopting both new professional practices and renewed structures of meaning that facilitate the transition to nation as imagined in the Constitution.

Resumen: El presente artículo reflexiona sobre las tensiones, contradicciones y énfasis de la puesta en práctica del discurso de nación multicultural para las personas negras, consagrado en la Constitución política colombiana desde la década de los 90. El análisis tiene como referente el estudio de la política pública para afrodescendientes en Bogotá (2005-2012)***