Gangs of New York

I've just finished watching Gangs of New York for the first time. I have to say it's one of those movies that leave an impact on a person after watching it to the end.
I am a bit hesitant to write this entry for a feeling that I have.
But as usual, I'm gonna go against my instinct and write it anyways. For this time, it might be wrong.
What I am going to type down here is pure personal thoughts and are not derived by any sort of belief, theory, or stereotypes.

So the movie for those who don't know it is about Irish gangs that used to fight in the streets of New York in the 1800s (also during the civil war). Mainly there were two parties, the one believing that Irish will always be Irish, and the ones that gave up being called Irish, and are now "native" Americans.
The whole point is, there was a lot of blood shedding.

I've just searched Wikipedia to see if those occurrences were true, (or at least to know how true it is) because I don't want to throw a judgment just based on watching a movie, and yes… it is mostly true (I'm gonna eliminate the Hollywood/amazing Scorsese drama because they shouldn’t count). In general, it was based on true history.

Now… what I'm trying to get at is when anyone looks back at the history of America and the Americans, there isn't so much glory in it… at least, I don't see it!
I don't know much about civil war, or issues with the immigrants, or the slavery.
I just know that those people hated each other, to the point of wanting to kill one another. One person held no respect whatsoever to anyone but himself and his opinion.
In my personal belief, I just think that when a trait dominates a group of people, it stays with them for generations. It might change due to circumstances, but it stays there, passively.
The thing is, unlike us Arabs (Muslims) who had a glorious past that we are still proud of (not an occasion passes by without us screaming out loud the accomplishment we made a gazillion years ago, forgetting that we stopped accomplishing anything a gazillion year after), Americans who have a shameful history (or so I want to call it), are the proudest people of their identity.
I've never been to the US in my life, but I have met a few Americans, and yes, they are all proud of where they come from, regardless of their original backgrounds.
They don't let the past scare them; in fact, the past is like their motive to prove their presence as "better people" (yemken ballashet shatte7).

No I'm not trying to say that I want to be an American so I can feel proud of a country that I belong to for once.

I just think that we have more rights than Americans to be proud of who we are, and not be scared of revealing our Arab identity as if we have something to be scared or ashamed of.
Because it's true, most of us (if not all) are ashamed of our current identity due to political issues and the new stereotype that has been force-pasted on our foreheads since 2001.

New York rose from poverty, gang wars, and corruption, to become the big apple.
It might sound silly, but it does give me hope that our Arab countries will someday rise from poverty, gangs (the Arab sort), and corruption, to overcome its pitfalls, and consider it, as we call it in Arabic, a "summer cloud".