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RichardKennaway comments on Manufacturing prejudice - Less Wrong
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I have lived in England for thirty years, and previously lived in Scotland, and I have never, ever, encountered anything resembling even slightly the account on that Facebook page. In fact, apart from the copycat incidents linked to by the OP, I have never heard of such things happening on account of ginger hair anywhere in the world.
I don't believe it.
This is one variety of "privilege" - being so personally out of the loop as a person who doesn't get discriminated against that you don't even believe in the discrimination.
In reality you are trapped in a "small world" like the (apocryphal) Hollywood actress who said "I can't believe Nixon won, nobody I know voted for him".
Do you have any evidence that ginger-bashing has ever occurred anywhere except in response to the South Park episode?
Spend a few minutes with google. Try things like '"red hair" prejudice England'.
Ok, I agree that it happens more than I had thought.
Irish descent and red hair are strongly correlated.
I have pretty-much only just arrived in the UK and I have been horrified by tthe "just joking (only not)" attitude towards people with red hair.
Mainly it's jokes - and those with actual red hair that I've met do the same sort of jokes in a slightly self-deprecating, slightly cringing way. Sounding like they'd obviously been singled out for victimisation all their life. I've also heard actual discrimination talk. Of the sort that contains phrases like "oh, well he's ginger, you know what they're like." That kind of attitude is quite astonishing over such a nonsensical physical attribute.
Now that you mention it, the idea that redheads are hot-tempered and irrational (which is itself a vestige of the "Irish temper" myth) does have a certain purchase on this side of the pond (U.S.)... though I mostly think of that as an artifact of mid-20th-century genre fiction, and in that context it mostly seems to apply to women, often coupled with a certain "you're so cute when you're angry" dismissiveness.
I have my experience from childhood, that ginger people were picked upon, long before South Park existed. Beating-up, I don't recall. Name-calling, I do. But then, I went to schools that weren't rough.
Not expecting my personal recall to be strong evidence to you.
Consider though the phrase "red headed stepchild". That one is old, and its antiquity should be fairly strong evidence.
The original post matches for lots of English (in particular) redheads I know. Coming from Australia to the UK, I boggle slightly at it.
Which matches? The original post, or Richard's experience?
The original post. (Clarified, thanks!)