Saw this yet again on Top Gear last night, (Rupert Grint was the star in the resaonably priced car on the episode that just aired on BBC America), and it reminded me that I’d been meaning to ask this before.
What’s up with all the ginger jokes? I’ve seen this countless times, and honestly, I don’t recall ever seeing or hearing someone from the US make fun of someone for being a redhead.
I’m sure there’s a logical reason for it that I’m just not getting…
A WAG: could it be a masked, politically correct way to make fun of the Irish?
Redheads are in significant numbers in the UK + sexist/racist/national jokes are liable to offend + Britons like taking the piss out of people.
That and gingers don’t feel pain.
Red-headedness is more prevalent amongst Scots people. It might be related to some lingering anti-“Celtic” sentiment.
I’ve noticed this with my 7th Graders in America. For them, it started back when that Ginger episode of South Park aired(2005).
Rhyming slang. As in nine-bob note.
Because they’re assholes. The limeys who do it, that is.
Arseholes then.
It’s the last acceptable face of racism (though not against any nationality or culture), and it’s still fairly common in the UK despite living in relatively enlightened times. I’m not convinced it’s an anti-Scottish/Irish thing as English and Welsh redheads get just as much grief. It’s more of a case of bonding through persecution of an Other, and begins at an early age, as soon as children can start taunting their peers essentially. Ginger kids are easy to spot from a distance, and at closer range can be teased for their freckly skin and tendency towards skin cancer; it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, and bullys like easy targets.
I’m surprised (and somewhat ashamed) to hear this seems to be a solely British prejudice, though South Park seem to have picked up on it (Mahaloth, below) as I recall from the original SP movie that the luckless Kenny is ginger. I wonder if a general population require a minority to be a certain size before the prejudice begins? Do albinos get the same grief?
For the record, my hair is brown, though I’ve long held a sneaking suspicion that I carry the ‘tragic ginger gene’, and indeed this was confirmed when I grew a beard a few years ago that was made up of all sorts of colours, including a few ginger whiskers here and there. It seems I’m a tabby.
Red hair used to be considered ugly, on this side of the pond as well. Remember Anne Shirley’s agonies over her red hair? My great-grandmother cut her own braids off when she was a little girl rather than be seen in town with red hair. I suppose the prejudice has hung on longer in the UK and turned into the weird ginger-tormenting thing.
My own little ginger girl has hair of a beautiful and unusual shade. She is self-conscious about it because everyone comments on it and she doesn’t like that, but she knows that everyone thinks it’s beautiful. Red hair is pretty much universally admired these days in the US/Canada.
Kenny is blonde. IIRC, Kyle is the redhead. FWIW, so am I.
Rob
Rangas rock! Yeah I think it is a carry over from when redheads were thought to be scottish. But as we know the readheads origanlly were vikings.
The word “ginger” itself seems to have been confined to the UK and recent colonies* until that South Park episode.
But, even without the word, the prejudice used to be common in the US, or at least the parts of it with large Irish populations. My grandfather, growing up in Baltimore in the 1930s, got picked on more for being a redhead than for being a Jew. (I wonder if that explains why he married a redheaded gentile?)
And, if it makes you feel any better about your fellow Brits, I think the eastern US anti-redhead prejudice was much more closely linked to anti-Irish racism than in the UK.
Because we redheads are smart, beautiful perverts.
Ginger is (Cockney) rhyming slang for a gay man.
Ginger Beer = Queer. Geddit?
So while I didn’t hear the particular Top Gear episode, a person from the other side of the pond, calling someone else ‘Ginger’ may not be in reference to other person’s hair.
Actually, redheads feel more pain.
Which side of Amy Pond now?
In the Antipodes the term of choice is “ranga”, as derived from orangutan.
Two of my kids are rangas. More chiacking than taking the piss, though
IMO the poms make more of a national sport of that than we do.
In days gone by the monicker was “Bluey” for guys and “Ginger” for girls.
I guess you have never heard of blonde jokes?
So what, you’ve never heard the phrase “beat like a red-headed step-child”?
I just had to say - ADORABLE.
