This article is about the creamy layer argument, according to which the better-off individuals in a social group targeted by a public policy tend to rip a disproportionate part of the benefits provided by this same policy. Such argument has been used to accuse the policy of inefficiency if not of perversity. Our chief aim here is to verify how this argument came to appear in Brazil’s public debate on affirmative action and how it was rearticulated in this new context. Using a combination of genealogy and reception studies methodology, we show (1) that the argument was received in Brazil through the reception of Thomas Sowell’s writtings on affirmative action in the US; (2) that Sowell used India’s affirmative action as the chief example of a policy tainted by the creamy layer effect; and (3) that, ironically enough, in the Indian debate this diagnosis is far from consensual. Finally we show that despite the fact that this argument was often employed to criticize the use of racial quotas in Brazil, the actual affirmative action programs implemented until 2012 adopted criteria that prevent the creamy layer effect. The data sources used for studying each context were different. For Brazil, we analyzed all texts on affirmative action published by newspapers Folha de S. Paulo and O Globo until 2012. For India and the United States, we reviewed the academic literature on the topic.