Listing People of Different Ethnicities Proves to be Challenging

Messy is how I would describe my performance when asked to name males and females from different ethnic groups, from different time periods. What an eye-opening experience I’m sure most people would find this activity to be.
White Males were the easiest for me to come up with for each of the time periods. This can be attributed to the fact that they faced the fewest challenges in the history of this country. Until recently, every one of our presidents had been a white male. Most of the famous inventors, professors, artists, and etc that I know of are white males. This can be attributed to the historical fact that other groups were being oppressed. Another attributing factor is what has been taught in history classes in the United States in the past and continues to be taught today. From grade school through high school most of the history that I learned about was American history. I feel like there’s a great emphasis on the accomplishments of the United States, while it’s seems that the subject of the major mistakes and missteps that America has made is often tiptoed around. I feel like the history I was taught about the Native Americans was the version that the United States wants to remember instead of what really happened. When I watched “Far and Away” for the first activity for this class I was thinking of the Native Americans at the end of the film. It’s an American film and as a movie watcher we are suppose to find ourselves cheering for Joseph to get his land that he wants so badly. Instead, I found myself thinking of the Native Americans who had lived so peacefully with their surroundings, who had been so cruelly killed or removed from the place they called home. It wasn’t Joseph’s land for the taking; it shouldn’t have been anyone’s land for the taking. But that’s not a subject that American history focuses on. Instead of telling of a time of cruelty and devastation to the Native American population, there are the stories of the ambitious men and women with big and powerful dreams.
In addition to what I believe is a shortage of accuracy in American history; I think there are major shortcomings in the teaching of the history of other countries. I had difficulty coming up with names of anyone from the Middle East and I could only name a couple Asians and Latinos. The people that I did name were all Americans.
Although I put some blame of my performance on this quiz, on the history classes I had while growing up, I will take the majority of the blame. I think it's a personal responsibility to become as knowledgeable as possible about the world that we live in. You can't begin to judge issues or people or attempt to solve problems and make progress without being knowledgeable. And we have a responsibility to educate our young and continue to learn as adults.
The black males and females that I listed were all people associated with change of some kind. From the civil rights movement and more recently Barack and Michelle Obama. Sadly, when blacks are mentioned in American history books it is most often in relation to their efforts for equality. As time progresses and books are updated, hopefully this will someday not be the case.
Do you think it’s only America that is so grossly unaware of the histories of other countries? Do you feel the way that I do about what was taught in history classes as you were growing up? Do you think the stories are told more as we wish to remember them, rather than how they actually occurred?