Entertaining Differences

When Billy is taken by the Tralfamadorians, he is kept in a zoo, where everyone looks at him like a very different kind. This looks weird to me because he is trapped in a zoo but he really isn’t, as he is traveling in time, which tells me that he is crazy and all these things are a product of his imagination. It also seems weird and offensive to me that he is kept that way, after all, he is a human being. 

This makes me think of how people find differences amusing. For example, as he was kept in a zoo, when the Spanish arrived to America, they took indigenous people to the royal courts in Europe to amuse the rich. They were human and they suffered, but Europeans didn't look at it that way. The same thing happens in circuses. While in the present it’s usually just animals and shows, in the past circuses were made up by people rejected by society. 

Previously in the book something similar could be observed, how Germans and Americans perceive each other. I wonder whether this will be something discussed in the book-why we look at differences that way.