The article deals with discourses on Black culture during the history of Brazilian religions. Practitioners of the Umbanda, which originated in the 1920s in south east Brazil, sought to de-Africanize and whitewash Umbanda s origins by dissociating Umbanda from its Afro-Brazilian influence. During the 1960s, Afro-Brazilian religions such as Candomblé spread from north east to south east Brazil. Many practitioners of Candomblé, especially from the white middle class, are engaged in an Africanization of the religion to reclaim the African origins. It is argued that the shift from Umbanda to Candomblé, i.e. from de-Africanization to re-Africanization, mirrors social changes. Umbanda thus expresses values of the modern society such as nationalism, equality, and social mobility, values thwarted during the late military dictatorship. The re-introduction of Afro-Brazilian religions after the fall of the regime represents an appearance of formerly repressed identities, which have now become objects for new forms of identity-making under post-modern conditions.