If you've seen the South Park episode "Gingervitis," you know how Cartman feels about gingers, or fair-skinned, freckled redheads: they're less than human. While most people viewing the episode probably took it as, at best, a morality lesson about arbitrarily discriminating against others, and at worst a joke in poor taste (maybe both), it isn't so funny in real life.
A group of students in Calabasas, CA, instead decided to institute "Kick a Ginger Day" at their middle school, and proceeded to beat up some of their classmates. While this is an example of the worst sort of juvenile stupidity, it does point out the underlying prejudices redheads have to deal with, whether it's jokes about their "fiery tempers" or sexual harassment. Even Christina Hendricks's character Joan on Mad Men continuously gets called "Red" and has comments made about her. And in the UK, ginger discrimination is wel -known — to the point where redheads have been awarded settlements after workplace harassment tied to their hair color. What do you think about all this? Are there more pejorative connotations connected to having red hair these days, or are people just now paying more attention to a long-extant problem?