In crisis-ridden social and cultural contexts, racism tends to be translated into action. This article, based on a study of Quebec in particular, looks at the political option of multiculturalism as a possible institutional and political response to racism. When the different levels of political organization of a society - in the present case, the Federal Government of Canada and the Provincial State of Quebec - are divided ideologically, a policy such as multiculturalism, conceived as a political means of handling immigration, is transformed into a political issue, generating a peculiar type of political crisis which in turn nourishes the cultural crisis. At this point, neither the control of immigration nor its management by the political structures can any longer subdue racist reflexes, which undermine the principle of cultural convergence inscribed in the preamble to the multicultural project.