I have never noted any oddness about red-haired people.
Schoolkids in the U.S. do not seem to make red hair any more of an issue than any of a dozen other traits, with hair color being ovberlooked among popular kids and a point of teasing among those who are not popular.
It was a British article, with numerous quotations from Brits and a few citations to Brit studies that claimed that the attacks on redheads continued among the adult population of Britain. This was hardly some behavior that (some) Yanks invented for the purpose of smearing Brits (such as the odd claims that Brits like “warm” beer).
I have not made any claim that there is institutionalized prejudice exhibited by the English against the Irish or Scots. I have noticed that (at least as recently as the 1970s), there was a general treatment of Irish laborers in England that corresponded to the way that people from Kentucky and Tennessee and West Virginia were treated in the Northern Rust Belt cities after those midlands people moved North for jobs during WWII and later. In the U.S., that has translated into comments about “hillbillies” and similar slurs. It hardly seems a stretch to believe that a physical characteristic that was a distinctive marker for a group that suffered discrimination would be expanded to become a target for abuse on its own (similar to “big hair”–a characteristic of a particular related social class–being the target of jokes in the U.S. a few years ago).
It would hardly be “racist” even if someone in this thread had made such a claim–which, of course, no one has.
There are prejudices about red-haired people going all the way back to medieval times (e.g., representations of Judas Iscariot as red-headed) and even antiquity (pseudo-Aristotle’s criticism of redheads in the Physiognomonica, though I can’t find the reference now). I wonder how much of this has filtered down into today’s “anti-ginger” slurs. Interestingly, there seems to be much less residual prejudice against left-handers, who were also traditionally viewed with suspicion.
I wasn’t necessarily trying to accuse English people of being racist. It just seems that, for the sake of humor, the English and other Europeans often openly insult and stereotype one another in ways that would be beyond the pale to most Americans if they were describing their Canadian and Mexican neighbors. However, I’m guessing that the aforementioned “90’s PC onslaught” has probably made such public needling between ethnic and national groups a lot less acceptable.
I wonder why these ideas have persisted in some places, but not others. Half my family has bright red hair and freckles, and to my knowledge none of them have been discriminated against or made fun of for it.
Do Jews and Germans and Japanese discriminate against people with red hair? Is it just an English problem, like discrimination against Mexicans in America?
Cryptoderk you are giving me (and probably others) a giant mindfuck that I don’t need to night either. Where are you getting this stuff from? The word nigger sums up lots of discrimination in one neat word. That is why people find it so offensive.
I don’t care what web citation you drag out;
Nigger (N) = A stupid, lazy, immoral black person whose ancestors were brought over from Africa primarily through slavery and who has never completely assimilated into white society and still exemplify immoral traits.
It scares me that people like you are running free not through this topic in particular but through bizarre cluelessness about well-known topics.
A quick drive by posting to assure you I’ll be adding to this thread in around six hours time. But this has now become even more relevant as someone has been kicked out of “big brother”, which is a television show watched by the kind of people who watch Channel Four in the UK for saying “nigger”, and the circumstances seem contentious. I’ll also familiarise myself with this situation and we can talk about it, as I think it may well have illustrated my point exactly.
After this, “Emily” was thrown out (our last big brother had a racism row, so they’re looking out very carefully for “racism”). The other two weren’t.
What you see here is hypocrisy of the highest order, of course. The problem as I understand it is that Emily may have meant it as an insult. If we pretend that that was the case, then you can see here how “nigger” is not always racist. After all, was the person who called themselve a nigger being racist? Of course not.
But of course the debate is whether “Ginger” is any better than “Nigger” as an insult. The answer, as I’ve said before, surely depends upon the attitude of the person giving the insult, not upon the insult itself.
Link for non-uk dopers about the ginger family to prove I’m not making ginger up as an anagram of nigger, which some people seem to be claiming:
“Ginger” is not as bad an insult as “Nigger” because, as already explained above, the latter carries hundreds of years of hatred and cultural baggage with it.
I think it was perfectly correct for Big Brother to have kicked Emily out. It’s totally unacceptable for her to have called Charley a nigger, even in jest. It’s a racist word regardless of whether you mean it as an insult. It’s been an insult for hundreds of years and that’s not about to change anytime soon. Plus she knew the rules when she signed up and she broke them, so yes, sling her out on her arse by all means.
What the f— is going on in this thread? Is this all some giant whoosh? Brits are beating up redheads? We’re arguing over whether or not calling someone the “n” word is racist? Is this for real, or is my calendar off and it’s actually April 1st?
In America there is a phrase “like a red-headed stepchild” meaning a hapless outcast person.
But the only time I hear “ginger” being used by anyone except Eric Cartman is to refer to orange cats. And even then people mostly say “Look at that orange cat.”
I also think it’s a mild leftover slur from the Ellis Island days of those fightin’ drinkin’ Papist Irish immigrants. My neighborhood is full of the descendents of F.D.P.I.I. and we had more redheads than average. Aside from the occasional carrot-or-copper-top nickname, they weren’t treated any worse than anybody else.
