European colonialism and imperialism gave rise to the US. Colonialism means founding colonies in specific geographic areas, while imperialism refers to the exercise of political, social, and economic control over colonized lands and people. Though the US proclaimed independence from the imperialist British crown in the 1700s, the US, too, functions as an imperialist country. The subjugation of Black Americans is directly related to colonialism; enslaved Africans were brought to the US and the Caribbean to sustain the production of cotton and other crops. Perry also shows the role of pro-US economic policies enacted by puppet governments in Latin American in sustaining racial inequity while protecting US imperialist interests.

The Great Migration was the movement of millions of Black Americans from the rural South to cities in the North and the urban South between 1910 and 1970. Many of them chose to migrate because of the racist violence Black people faced in the Jim Crow South. Yet, as Perry shows, the Northern US was never free of racism. Moreover, migrations of Black people to Southern cities were also significant in changing and shaping the landscape of the modern US.