Undoubtedly, in several countries in the world, a large and socially disadvantaged black population is found cohabitating with a more affluent group of whites. Historical reasons, however, and the magnitude of these socioeconomic gaps by race may differ in each context. Two relevant examples of this phenomenon are Brazil and the United States (US), countries with very different levels of economic and human development, where significant and relatively deprived populations of African descent are mainly the result of European colonization that established a flourishing slave-based economy in the new world from the late 1500s until late 1800s, leaving a legacy of social discrimination that remains today. Both cases are characterized by extreme social inequalities which very often correlate with the racial divide, for which different positive discrimination initiatives in education or employment have been undertaken throughout the last decades in the US, and more recently in Brazil, even if they have increasingly been questioned in recent years. However, they also differ in a number of ways.