“Alienation” is a term used by several of the commissions established to investigate the root causes of Black rebellion in America, denoting that Black young people were “withdrawing from American society” (176) because of the systemic racism they faced. Hinton is critical of this term, seeing it as a way that well-meaning white liberals “tended to pathologize” (175) Black Americans, essentially blaming them for their own reactions to living in a racist society.

Hinton uses ”the crucible period” to refer to the period of violent rebellions that took place in cities across America in the late 1960s and early 1970s, starting after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She argues that this period, though not as well-remembered as the civil rights movement of the early 1960s, “has defined freedom struggles, state repression, and violence in Black urban America down into our own time” (12).

Hinton uses the term “the cycle” several times throughout America on Fire to refer to a repeated pattern of events that occurred in cities all across America, and which continues to occur to this day. A single small encounter between police and Black people would escalate into mass violence and rebellion. The police would overreact, which prompted the Black residents to fight back, which was used to justify an even more draconian response from police, which inspired even more widespread rebellion.