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This article takes the field of "health of the black population" as an object to problematize some tensions and possibilities existing around the operationalization of the concepts of universality and equity in public policies and no debate about the right to the city. The question that mobilizes it is: how to articulate the search for the universalization of rights with demands mobilized by specific groups in an unequal society. In order to respond, to approve the debates and the resistances surrounding the institutionalization of the National Policy of Integral Health of the Black Population and its relation with the prerogatives of the Unified Health System. The result is a critique of the universalization/targeting and recognition/distribution and pointing to a dialectical approach. Categories that consider a mediation between singularity, particularity and universality.

The concept of Institutional Racism (IR) gained emphasis in the late 1990s and the 2000s. It became one of the central terms in the discussion on racism and the Black Population Health. In Brazil, this category hegemonically influences the understanding of racism in health studies and debates. This qualitative case study paper analyzes the incorporation of the IR concept in Brazil in implementing the National Comprehensive Health Policy for the Black Population. Government documents from the Ministry of Health and the Institute of Applied Economic Research were analyzed. Although the formal inclusion of the discussion about IR in the public policy agenda in the early 21st century is a great achievement, apprehending this fact in isolation disregards the dialectical interaction between individual, institutional, and structural forms in the racialization dehumanizing process. Thus, combating IR depends on facing the reasons that lead institutions to reproduce racism and its consequences on access to housing, work, education, and health services and actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]