When people shout at me on the street that i’m a "fat cnt" or a “fat bastard”, I tell them I’m not a cnt or a bastard.
Nazis. You can always make fun of Nazis.
If you want to help the poor little sun-dodgers click me
Trolls. (But not in this thread or this forum, unfortunately.)
I was going to link to the recent GD thread that was titled something like: Are Ginger Headed People More Highly Evolved? (I probably didn’t get the exact wording there), but it seems to have been deleted. Could be the guy who started it was banned. Or maybe my search skills suck…
But they were the master race. Isn’t that racism? 
Count me in as another person whose response to the OP was, “WTF is a ‘Ginger person’???”
Let’s see, there’s Ginger Spice, Ginger Grant (from “Gilligan’s Island”), Ginger Rogers, the Gingerbread Man… I don’t recall hearing any of these people insulted.
Ahhhhh, GQ. :smack: That’ll teach me for trying to be kind to the hamsters and limiting the search to GD because I “knew” it was a GD thread…
Check out the link in the OP. It appears to be a problem limited to the isle of Britain, (or, probably, just to England).
am I the first to notice that ginger is an anagram for “greg in”?..
or “in greg” which sounds more sinister if you think about it.
It’s not polite to insult anyone.
That being said, the cultural baggage that ‘nigger’ carries is far more evocative than the cultural baggage that ‘ginger’ carries.
If you went into a room full of red-haired people (in America at least) and shouted “Ginger!” I don’t think you’d be in any sort of trouble. I’ll bet you’d be relatively safe even in Britain.
Gingers do have souls, right?
By using race in an insult, you are calling on stereotypes. If you are using it as an insult, then there must already be a negative connatation there, or you wouldn’t use it.
Say you let your dog crap on my lawn. I could yell out my front door “Damn it, keep your dog of my lawn, you fisherman.” You would just stare at me, and walk on, wondering what the heck I meant. Why? Because there aren’t negative connotations to “fisherman”.
If I yelled “Damn it, keep your dog of my lawn, you nigger”, then I am tapping into a wealth of preexisting stereotypes about people with dark skin. Basically, if you are using the word in an insult, then there must be a meaning already there, or why would you be using that word in the first place?
If I tell a blonde joke, I’m not basing it off the wavelength of light that is reflected from their heads, I’m basing it on a cultural meme of blonde=dumb.
Even though one word is an anagram of the other. I just noticed that.
No more so, nor less, than any of us.
Which is to say: no.
Since I’m another Yank who’s mostly puzzled about the basis for the anti-ginger blasts by the English, I’ve also suspected that these were just thinly-disguised anti-Irish and/or anti-Scottish insults. How far off am I about this?
Oh I don’t know … totally perhaps
Unless you are under the assumption that there is a consistently maintained social engineering program in British schools to villify the Scots and Irish via the nebulous use of the word “Ginger”.
Seems pretty unlikely doesn’t it.
Personally I consider it rather ‘racist’ for American folk to casually comment on the supposed English penchant for racism towards their neighbours.
In the past, successive Kings and Queens took great delight in leathering the crap out of them for centuries. The common man didn’t really get a look in.
Calling the Irish Micks or Paddies is now considered to be a slur, prior to the 90’s PC onslaught they were socially acceptable (in England) euphemisms for the Irish (they were also to a degree derogatory)
Likewise ‘Jock’ is used for the Scottish but this is not considered a slur.
Then you have to take into account that the likelihood the schoolchild knows that ginger hair was a trait of these Celtic countries is going to be pretty wee.
Ginger haired people look ‘odd’.
Schoolkids need no other reason to pick on someone.
Adults know better, however a Ginger Twat is still a Twat, otherwise they would simply be a Ginge.
BTW as was not really addressed in the OP’s BBC article. When said by itself
“Ginger” is the name given to hair colour, and the affectionate name for red-head children.
“Ging-er” as in Gingham, is generally used as the derogatory.