Interesting...

I ended my previous post saying that White, Black, and Native American should be most represented on TV considering how big and long their history in America is compared to others.

It made me realize something...its already rare to learn about blacks and even Indians in school, mostly what you learn is just white history.

I had realized about a day ago something strange in my American Civilization to 1865 class....we have learned more about the Indians and slaves in that class, than all my years of high school combined.

I remember one teacher freshman year of high school took the initiative to have us watch a slave movie called Amistad (I didnt like the movie cause I am not big on subtitles, and I also hate watching movies and having to take notes and quizzes over it), during black history month, this class was a Geography class, so yeah he was going out of his way entirely.

But we are learning lots about slavery and the Indians, but quite frankly I am one of those people who feels too much pain when learning about slavery. It harbors hate in me that anyone could do this to another, and then it makes me feel bad cause it makes me wonder, whenever I don't want to go to class or when I complain about having to do this or having to do that, am I being ungrateful considering what my ancestors were put through???

To me, there really isn't much to know about America before 1865, one can easily sum up the 100 years leading up to 1865: America goes to war with Britain in the Revolutionary war, America because the United States. They keep moving indians off of their land. Slavery becomes a hot topic several times in history. Women's rights start to pick up during abolishionism. Civil war happens and slaves are freed and the Confederates lose to the Union (yes south, you lost, get over it!!!). There is America's first 100 or so years right there.

But what I find interesting is how you don't hear too much of other cultures' history. When it came to the indians, you mostly only heard about them in the 1800s but very very little in the 1900s.

Like I said, American History is mostly just about white history (which is why no White History month or White History class will ever be needed).

But you learn more about blacks than you do other minorities. Maybe its because of the extensive history between blacks and whites, and the fact that blacks fought back against racism more than any other minority (the irony of this is that blacks got rights for all minorities, yet all minorities are racist and hateful towards blacks, talk about being ungrateful).

But what real interests me is how I found out about the Japanese interment camps. I had to learn it from the tv show 7th Heaven. At first I thought it was like the concentration camps. I asked my 8th grade english teacher who then took 10 mins out of class during our lesson about the Holocaust to explain the difference between the two.

In fact, I learned more about the Holocaust in both my 8th grade english class and my senior english class than I did history class.

Its amazing, but who is surprised when the only thing you learn about sadly in history is just wars? You don't even learn all the wars. We never did learn about the Spanish-American War or the Mexican-American war. Heck we never even got to Korean War or the Vietnam war or even the civil rights movement in history class (although our 11th grade history teacher made us watch a Sidney Poiter movie during black history month, and once again we had to take notes which totally ruined the movie).

But there is more to history than war. My college has history classes directed at other races and even countries. There is a European history class (personally I am only interested in French history, not so much English/British history). You have African History classes and an African American class. There is a class on Latin America, and East Asians, and there is much more.