The most diverse nation is the worldWhen I was living in Japan and talking to my friends about Americans, I got the strong impression that my friends thought the average American was white . Of course they realize that there are many other ethnic groups in the United States, but they do not realize the true extent of racial diversity in America. In their minds, an average American has white skin, a tall nose, long legs, big eyes, and a muscular body. So I wondered what could have led them to this image of the average American. Then I realized that the description sounds a lot like that of a cartoon hero. Perhaps American heroes of television and film have had a powerful impact in creating images of the average American for people in foreign countries. There seems to be a strong feeling among people of different races that putting characters with a wide range of ethnic diversity in TV shows, cartoons or movies just to be politically correct makes no sense. There currently seems to be a strong resentment towards political correctness, even among minorities. While I agree that putting characters of different races in TV shows or movies can sometimes be unnatural, I completely disagree that it is meaningless. Think of all the American heroes from movies, cartoons, or television you know. You would probably think of Superman, Batman, Indiana Jones, James Bond, GIJoe, Rocky, Rambo, X-men, Luke Skywalker, Shaft or Zorro. How many non-white heroes have you invented? Probably less than the number you got for white heroes. This may seem natural considering that the majority of people in the United States are white, but it is clear that the percentage of white heroic characters in television and film is greater than the actual American population. In the 1990 census, there were 248,709,873 Whites (80.2%) 29,986,060 Blacks (12.1%) 22,354,059 Hispanics (9.0%), and 7,273,662 Asian/Pacific Islanders. (2.9%) This means that for every 6.6 white people there is one person of color. Comparing this proportion of white and black American heroes on television or in movies, there seems to be a large discrepancy between the world of reality and the world of imagination. There are many more white heroes than simple demographic proportions suggest. Then I suspect that white people have much more influence in the creation of these heroes than people of any other race.