This paper presents the results of a sociological research on racial discrimination in Colombian universities. Racism is understood as a social process and based on an empirical qualitative work from in-depth interviews, the article approaches the everyday racism experienced by students in universities in Bogotá who are racialized as black men or black women according to the constructions of racial otherness in Colombia. The main mechanisms of manifestation of racism and discrimination identified in the research are expressed subtly or from euphemisms and they tend to generate and reproduce a supposed inferiority and subordination of black students at universities in Bogotá, paradoxically to the core values and principles of universality and meritocracy present in the very origins of university ethos in the country.