Examples Of Outcasts During The Columbian Exchange

928 Words4 Pages

During the Columbian Exchange, indigenous Americans were taken from their homes and brought back to the country of Spain. The Spainards put them on “display” so people could see what they looked and acted like. These natives felt as outcasts because they didn’t look the same as the Spanish and believed in a different culture. Some are forced into being outcasts while others make decisions depending on their interests, which can lead to them feeling like outcasts. While the feeling of being an outsider is determined on a person and their situation, ultimately, this feeling of being an outcast is universal as people have traits and characteristics that separate them from others, which leads to individuals feeling like an outcast, and this situation …show more content…

This is mainly seen when a group of people are different from the natives or the majority of the population, which can cause them to feel like outcasts. In Encountering the Other, humanity, since the start, has encountered people different from them in which they associate themselves with outcasts as they feel different, making everyone outcasts at some point. The author specifies that, “The encounter with the other, with other people, has always been a universal and fundamental experience for our species” (Kapuscinski 233). Kapuscinski explains how the others have always been different universally, which shows how being an outsider is a universal experience at some point in time. Along with cultural differences, people can feel like outcasts in other ways such as their interests like different music genres. Chancelor Johnathan Bennett, better known as Chance the Rapper, briefly described this feeling of being an outsider universally through one of his songs, Prom Night. In Prom Night, Chance dedicates one line saying, “We were all outcasts, only listened to Good Mob…” (Chance the Rapper 0:23), which refers to the Hip Hop group Goodie Mob. This sentence demonstrates that everyone is an outsider because of the things they take interest in, which in this case was Goodie Mob. This also shows how people feel like outcasts in different ways like the only …show more content…

For example, Benjamin Franklin had odd and unique habits that others did not, like sitting in a cold room without clothes. Some might think of him as an outsider but it didn’t isolate him or make him different from the others. Franklin also wore different clothes than others but it didn’t make him an outcast as it was just his way of expressing his life and feelings. Similarly to Benjamin Franklin, Encountering the Other doesn’t necessarily make the others outsiders because being an “other” doesn’t mean you're an outsider because being an outsider means being different from society, while another just differs from another ethnic or cultural group. Just because someone is uniquely different from another doesn’t always make them an outsider, and just develops them as a character or it is what they choose, like

More about Examples Of Outcasts During The Columbian Exchange

Open Document