Gingers and prejudice.
 

MOD EDIT: This thread split off from here.


I was thinking more along the lines of people that discriminate against ginger people.

Wil has so much to learn about the malevolent soullessness of gingers.

How does one discriminate effectively against a hair colour? That's like someone being offended by a joke about blue eyed people.

It's not just a hair color. They also have to be fair skinned and have freckles.

Except discrimination against ginger people is actually a thing that happens commonly. For example, a bunch of non-ginger people commenting that ginger people have no soul.

I hope you're kidding Wil. White Knighting Gingers is a lost cause.

They're not considered enough of a minority for it to be inherently offensive.

There is no real Ginger discrimination. And the second Gingers start to recognize it as legitimate discrimination, they will only be mocked further. See; Coppercab.

It wasn't until that song I sorted out that ginger is an anagram for nigger.

There is, and it doesn't take ginger people to recognize it. People are bullied, excluded and killed for it. If you believe that people shouldn't be discriminated against because of their body or personality, that includes hair colour.

Wil you do realize we're not serious about actually hating gingers, right?

Unfortunately, many people are.

It doesn't matter whether or not you seriously hate ginger people. Comments like that don't roll off people's backs, and it perpetuates a culture where it's acceptable to belittle people for things that don't matter.

You've changed, Max the Mug.

Yeah. He's not called Max the Mug any more, for one thing.

I agree with Wil tbh, ginger people are expected to put up with it because it's all in good fun. But for a lot of people it just isn't.

Your mother's all in good fun.

I don't know what that means.

You can say it about every single joke made by human. There always will be people who feel offended because they took a harmless joke seriously. Geez.

"Why did the chicken cross the road?"

I find this offensive.

This post originally ended "Because he was a useless Jewish nigger."

I never make Ginger jokes. Partly this is because I'm an American, and we are almost completely unaware of the prejudice, or jokes that revolve around it. The word Ginger isn't evenly commonly known to mean a red-headed person in the states. Americans that are aware of it or mention it have gotten the term from European media or friends.

However, if it was commonly used here in the states, I would totally hate on them. I'm a hater. That's what I do.

I crossed the road today. YOU'RE CALLING ME A CHICKEN?! What an A-hole.

If I were a ginger, I'd probably still laugh at ginger jokes. The same goes if I was black. Or Jewish.

I'm just going to drop some Steve Hughes in here. I think you need to open at 3:30. Basically my opinion on offence. Also,

WEB DESIGN!

Actually I'm pretty sure it was South Park that sparked the Ginger "prejudice". But on the whole, OANST is correct. The only place it's prevalent is the internet. I've known several gingers in my life, and I'm more than certain they would just laugh if someone genuinely tried to deride them with tonsorial bigotry.

The one exception is Coppercab, who only made an entire generation of gingers look bad by turning himself into a lolcow with his butt-hurtery.

You don't know that. You haven't experienced lifelong societal stigmatization. You haven't been the subject of the same demeaning 'jokes' decade after decade. You don't have to fight for your equal standing with everyone around you every day because of the way you look or the way you act. You're not part of a minority systematically under-represented, having your opinions shouted down by anyone with a cheap and belittling sense of humour.

It's only very recently that I've started being aware of how invisible all this is to me unless I actively go looking for it, but I'm deciding to censor my communication in respect of those who are affected by discrimination.

EDIT: This @Varrok. Others posted before me.

It existed waaaaaaay before South Park ran that episode. I had never once heard an American use the word "ginger" in that way before that episode ran, but plenty of Europeans were saying it.

Well, that's a miss, cause I actually was the subject of others' jokes for a long while (like... hmm... about 5-6 years in school - ok, it's not a lifelong, but definitetly some) and I realised that I cared way too much about that. When I recall that period of my life I can't believe how much of an idiot I was :)

The whole "gingers don't have a soul" thing always saddened me. most mature people will take it as nothing more than a joke. But things like this encourages bullies to use it as leverage. I'm pretty sure, without checking, that after CopperCab became a thing and South park also took up the issue, there's probly a lot more chubby red-haired kids getting bullied now than before.

I think that intent is pretty important. If it's good natured ribbing, I don't really see the issue.

I'm talking about joking and you're mostly talking about bullying under the pretext of joking. The second thing is caused by people being idiots/A-holes, not by jokes themselves. We didn't bully anyone in this thread...

...and why don't you react that way when someone is called a faggot? It's basically the same.

One of my good mates is actually a ginger, thing is he's huge so if anyone generally wanted to rip into him when it goes beyond banter, he'd probably batter their face in. So yeah, do that.

Do you think this talk about ginger people calls for a thread about prejudices? I find it an interesting subject and the last thing Wil wants is his thread shit on by a subject that clearly makes him uncomfortable.

If your way of coping with being the subject of demeaning mockery is to stop caring about it, or play along with it, then cool. Good for you. Not everyone can do that. You don't get to pick and choose what you're offended by. You do get to choose whether to insult people or not, or whether to stand up for them or let shit slide.

Without knowing why you were being made fun of, you were not in the wrong to be upset by being mocked for no good reason. It's your antagonists who were being improper, and they're the only ones who should ideally chance their behaviour.

I don't disagree per se, but good natured ribbing can only happen when you're talking about individuals who you know are OK with it.

No, but anyone reading this thread (which is, of course, public) has the right to be offended by your joke. Even if you mean it comically and not literally, and even if it's reasonable to expect anyone to realize that, it does not make it good natured. The context here is pretty clear: non-red-headed people deriving humour from a blanket statement about red-headed people.

The circumstances are different in that there a number of people on the Forums who are OK with that, and who I know are OK with that. If I saw it being directed inappropriately - to someone who wasn't OK with it, or in a genuinely disparaging way - I would take action. And if I haven't done so in the past, well, like I say, it's only very recently that I've decided to sensitize myself to this kind of thing.

I need to split this thread.

You're saying that people might get offended by "my" ginger joke, and yet you're judging that calling sbd "a faggot" is ok, because some users you know accept that.
But, as you said, it's a public thread, so anyone can read this. Some guest users as well (correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know which forums are viewable by guests). You can't simply know each one's opinion about it. And they might not want to create an account just to say they're offended but leave forums forever or sth. When you start thinking about every single person who's lacking a distance towards himself, you can't really make any joke. It simply leads to the loss of humour, I don't approve that

To be clear: If I saw any person who felt sad or offended because he didn't get my joke, I wouldn't laugh at him more, but try to correct the situation. But in that situation, there are really no offended ppl... well, except you... but you're not gingers afaik so it doesn't count... Why making a problem, when there's none?

I have nothing against splitting thread

*thread split*

Okay look here goes, because all in all this is what it boils down to *prepare for rant*:

We live in a democratic western society were freedom of speech is common place. People have the right to say whatever they want without fear of consequence, no matter what it is they are saying. As people made clear in the Burschenschaft thread, you cannot discriminate between who gets to speak and who doesn't because then the lines become increasingly blurred. Furthermore, because of this people will no doubt be offended by some of things people say. The point is, who gives a flying fuck whether or not you are offended by what people say? Why should I care whether a person with red hair gets offended because I call them 'ginger'? Being offended doesn't affect you physically at all? When I Was a strong Catholic I used to be offended all the time by how people used God's name in vain and the sort. What did I do? I got on with my life. People should get on with their lives and stop taking jokes too seriously.

i bet you ginger-haters have brown hair. fuckin poopheads

I had the misfortune of suffering through the whole ginger thing in school, but it originated from The Catherine Tate Show (which I thought was rubbish by the way) who did an entire sketch taking the piss out of ginger haired people.

Since I've left school though and gone out and made new friends, people actually find it an attractive part of me.

Apparently it's big in Japan. Go there.

http://images.werdyo.com/2010/09/26/...e-awards-0.jpg

Notably, Gingers can be hot too, so...it's not even like ginger jokes are very good for crying out loud.