Columbian Expedition to Be Marginalized

Columbian Expedition To be marginalized as a population means many things depending on the particular population, the geographic area, and the chronological period. Typically, marginalized populations are those that, at least in part, are excluded, powerless, considered unimportant, and often have no say in the socio-political or cultural vibrancy of the particular society. Over the course of the last few centuries, for instance, children have been marginalized -- they were put to work as soon as possible, yet had no real political or social power.

Women, too, have experienced this trend -- indeed there remain many societies in which males continue to dominate. In American history, one of the clearest examples of a marginalized population has been the various immigrant populations that, depending on the chronological period, had various levels of severity. Certainly, the idea of marginalization is nothing new. In the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, an article from the Journal of American Culture, presents an overview of some of the issues surrounding the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America.

For instance, the Chicago Tribute of the time hinted at some of the exhibits being organized under evolutionary and cultural lines for example, one publication noted that Anglo-Saxon and Caucasian exhibits about humanity at one end of the spectrum, with "the negro types at the fair…. Represented… the barbarous or half-civilized state of a people who are a numerous and rapidly increasing class of American citizens" (270).

The real irony of this argument was that even in the 1800s, the idea of America was seen to be inclusive -- and certainly after the Civil War and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, a new attitude about racial equality was presumed. Exhibitions of this type, though, are often reflective of cultural attitudes of the time -- and the confluence of the "White City" as a cultural paradigm seemed, as DH Lawrence predicted, the world can expect "always the same" from America.

America "refuses to hear the hum of destruction underneath… America has got to destroy…. It is [its] destiny" (272). Yet, according to historians of the era, the exposition also defined American culture -- presenting lectures and discussions by leading activists about religion, science, women's rights, and racial equality. Even Historian Frederick Jackson Turner gave a paper on the significance of the American Frontier. All, despite the tragedy of a smallpox epidemic, attempted to portray to the world that America was on the verge of becoming the predominant country of enlightenment.

In contrast, ethnic historian and Professor of History at Columbia University Mae Ngai, in Transnationalism and the Transformation of the "Other": Response to the Presidential Address, shows that it is the very idea of transnational representation that continues to define the basis of American culture.

Using Shelley Fisher Fishkin to show that "figures who have been marginalized precisely because they crosses so many borders that they are hard to categorize," Ngai asks that the contemporary historians and sociologists utilize a transnational approach to ask the important questions of migration, ethnicity, and empire (64). The value of Ngai's approach is that she finds links between past and current trends, and uses a reasonable multidimensional approach to enlarge the frame of reference within the study of the ways in which marginalized populations.