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Abstract: Between 1937 and 1940 the Fascist regime passed a series of laws which attacked and discriminated against “racial” minorities in Italy and the peoples subject to Italian colonial rule. These laws were meant to establish the superiority of the “Italian race” over peoples considered inferior or even dangerous, like the “Gypsies”, the Jews and the Africans. They were applied rigidly, accompanied by a pervasive propaganda campaign that made their favourable reception possible among certain sectors of Italian society, which after decades of imperialism was already disposed to consider itself naturally superior to the peoples under their colonial domination. Publications of the period and the files of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Popular Culture display the positive attitude toward racial discrimination by members of the Fascist Party and also by other groups without an official political character, such as journalists and soldiers. These documents allow us to understand how Italian society, or at least part of it, responded to a policy designed to create a “racial conscience” in the Italian people, accepting and favouring the discriminatory provisions of the regime.