A red-haired family claims to have been driven from their Newcastle home because of abuse.
Why is the harassment of redheads dismissed as just harmless fun?
...Journalist Sharon Jaffa - also a red-head - says society must stop its ginger-baiting.
"Growing up as a redhead I was lucky enough to escape with just the occasional name-calling - having the surname Jaffa was no doubt a double-whammy. But attacking someone on the basis of their hair colour can be every bit as damaging as persecuting someone for their race or religion, and therefore, in some cases, needs to be taken just as seriously."
...Workplace psychologist Professor Cary Cooper, of Lancaster University, says abuse can be "an unhealthy release valve for stress" and redheads, as a visible minority not protected by law, have become a target.
While other forms of the discrimination are the subject of marches, lobbying and education campaigns, redheads cannot expect the arrival of the politically correct cavalry anytime soon.
Actually, they probably can.
It's not complicated: children bully redhead children because children are nasty little bastards who crave acceptance and pick on any obvious difference to cement their place in opposition to tribal outsiders, and some children don't grow up into adults.
14 comments:
Really? This is an actual problem in England?
Hmmm... define 'problem'.
Redheaded children always get picked on in the same way that fat children or children with big ears get picked on, unless they are able to overcome it by force of personality.
Adult gingers complaining about teasing/discrimination (your choice) is an interesting example of the way our culture has become utterly dominated by the desire to define and protect victim minorities.
(Which I don't say is necessarily a bad thing, by the way. It's a pretty tiresome and often laughable thing, but there are much worse things.)
"Growing up as a redhead I was lucky enough to escape with just the occasional name-calling -
You mean she escaped all those years of slavery and genocide? That is indeed one lucky redhea...err, person of russet follicles.
Food, redheads, boozy bishops, Cornish independence? I think you folks need another Blitz.
My hair's not red: it's golden. You horrible capellist/follicalist, you.
My hair's not red: it's golden. You horrible capellist/follicalist, you.
Cultural awareness is supposed to bring nations together, but I think it's having the opposite effect on me. The more I learn about England, the more I'm glad to be living in America. I may be on my way to contracting OJ's time-zone phobia.
I urge my fellow Americans to correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never heard of red heads being teased for being red heads. For having freckles, of course, but not being red heads.
I think it must be a holdover from the days of witch hunts.
True, the correct literal translation from the Hebrew is "Thou shalt not suffer the ginger-headed to live," but new scholarship suggests that the verse concerns a particular sect that wore a yarmulke made from pulped ginger, rather than the more orthodox linen.
Same up here, David. Never saw it or heard anyone complain about it. Freckles neither.
But I suppose we can put that down to how boring we are. It must be a specialty of more interesting countries.
In the autobiography of the Mayflower Madam, she lamented that she could not sell redheads, no matter how shapely.
Now, that's prejudice.
Catherine Tate solved the problem in Gingers for Justice.
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