Indeed, suggesting that deep-seated structural racism is far from a uniquely American problem also makes some people upset.
I very, very highly doubt that. In terms of US history, this period covers several important topics:
* Reconstruction
* Settling of the American West
* Rise of the Granger and later Progressive movements
* Burgeoning immigration to the US, and all the tensions that result from that
* Second Industrial Revolution, which also fuels the Gilded Age and labor movements
* Beginnings of American imperialism (and somewhat ironically, the end of it... the US becomes pretty uninterested in territorial expansion almost immediately after experiencing its first major bout of imperial expansion in the Spanish-American War).
It's possible that you just don't remember what you learned in US history classes in this time period, but completely excising a quarter of the country's history would be rather surprising, especially when it's the part of the history that covers both the biggest shift in self-image (from an agrarian country distancing itself from world politics to an industrialized powerhouse increasingly engaged in world politics) and the development of mass political consciousness worldwide in the late Long 19th Century.
Thankfully I lucked into the English section taught by the female equivalent of Ron Swanson who made us read books that covered the Jim Crow south and the Indian wars. Looking back she was obviously a bull #### and rightfully had a bone to pick when it came to mistreatment of demographic groups under color of law.
All of those topics were covered where I went.
Though interestingly, the ones I do also tend to get across the point that caste discrimination was made illegal in India, and never tend to go into much explicit detail on how just because something is illegal, it doesn't mean it isn't done/is regularly enforced.