In the last decades, Latin America has been crossed by a speech that incorporates security in a code of order and focuses on pursuing small incivilities to avoid possible major dangers. In this article, we identify and describe different dimensions that make up a "racist narrative" (in the Bonvillani sense) in the city of Río Cuarto, (Córdoba, Argentina), inscribing them in the criteria of police selectivity focused on the capture and persecution of young people of popular sectors. From the qualitative fieldwork (in-depth interviews) of a completed research, we answer two questions: What are the ethnic-racial characteristics that enter into dialogue with other dimensions of the experience of these young people articulating a racist narrative and its logics of exclusion? Can one consider the rules that have governed the contraventional detentions that affect these young people as institutionalization of racism?