Is it possible all the redheaded American entertainers who’ve recently had major breakthroughs in entertainment are actually part of a freed people who faced as much racism as any other ethnicity? With red hair generally looked at as appealing on a male or female through the lens of an American eye, it didn’t used to be that way in the old country. And that old country (namely Europe) still has to deal with certain people who shift into monsters of ill will toward redheads. Those people hate redheads so much, they demonstrate a deep-down and disturbed compulsion to bring physical harm to those with flaming locks. Over there, it’s called Gingerism. Over here, it’s just called…well, madness.
That doesn’t stop some people from thinking redheads are really the mad ones out of all.
Certainly here in America, notable people with natural red hair have made enough inroads into pop culture relevance that it compels you to connect redheads to creative brilliance. Everybody from Conan O’Brien, Nicole Kidman, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams more or less make up the majority of what you see or hear about in movies or TV the last few years. And let’s not forget that (as mysterious as it is that every significant American seems to come from Texas), just about every important artist, politician or scientist in world history were redheads. Everybody from King David, Galileo Galilei, Thomas Jefferson to Mark Twain, Carol Burnett and, yes, Lucille Ball had or have natural red hair.
We’ll call it good then that most of those people became iconic citizens of the world or their antecedents moved to America to get away from the concept of Gingerism permeating Europe already starting in the Middle Ages. The mysterious nature behind Gingerism obviously comes from the same background all racism comes from: Sheer ignorance at the connective strings among human beings. But since Gingerism started in the U.K. where redheads were and are quite prominent, there seems to be evidence it was through fantasy and literary legends that led to a sustained bias against red-haired people in that part of the world.
Such a scenario may just supply an additional answer in what pushes a racist attitude into a blinding adamancy that sometimes never turns around.
Perhaps akin to the bias against albinos, there was a thought centuries ago throughout Europe that those with red hair were possibly vampires, a werewolf or similar creatures of the night. This was thought to be with redheads who also possessed green eyes–something we see favorably in various famous redheads (mostly women) today. Worse, though, were the ideas of redheads being evil and only existing to do harm to mankind. To remind us how morose the Brothers Grimm stories once were: there was a legend placed into one of their stories that depicted a red-headed man as a person of ill ethical repute. While perhaps amusingly appealing-sounding today, a red-haired man in those times was also said to be overly libidinous.
That might have some painful irony when many of the most popular redheads today don’t automatically translate into such a beastly persona. Despite this, that doesn’t seem to provide any rhyme or reason for Gingerism to exist in Europe.
Despite being an acknowledged bias currently in England, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of dialogue going about how redheads there are still sometimes the unfortunate recipients of violent attitudes against them. As with racism in America that does get brutally honest dialogue of late, the true definition of where racist attitudes started are almost always blurred. Now that we’re living in a time when we use the catalyst of the media for blame in violent and sexual behavior, can it safely be posited that Gingerism and all racism came from legend and art?
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The hidden truths behind that for America’s racist attitudes toward African-Americans have been argued in some circles to be from D.W. Griffith and his 1918 silent epic “Birth of a Nation.” As with redheads in the Middle Ages being depicted as vicious beasts, Griffith depicted African-Americans in “Nation” as animals and general buffoons that carried over into the talkie era of films for decades. When there isn’t a doubt that the American populace were a tad bit naïve in 1918 (regardless of WWI bringing bitter reality), a whole generation couldn’t help but be influenced seeing black people in a light that was nothing but myth. Yes, that generation includes your own ancestors who perhaps never wavered from their racial bias, right into your own generation.
Likewise, with the low depiction of redheads for centuries in the U.K. and most other parts of Europe, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see tradition passed on there to the present day. It’s gotten so bad there at times with violent assaults that even Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has spoken out about it, though the news never makes it to America or even any reference in the Harry Potter books.
Parallels between redheads and African-Americans at least have become closer over the centuries. For England, the prejudice against redheads seemed to co-exist while redhead Elizabeth I reigned. Of course, racism still exists concurrently in America while we enjoy a black President in the White House for the first time in U.S. history. Even the power of reality in a redhead or African-American obtaining a powerful position can’t seem to adjust a belief system.
As St. Patrick’s Day approaches during the month of this article writing, we’ll still look at those Irish redheads as being from a line of luck and, despite being a genetic anomaly that’ll reportedly be around for future generations, have really been freed from oppression while living in America. They may just be the key, however, to reminding how powerful legend and pop culture has put a permanently imprinted stamp of racism on the minds of generations rather than a natural predilection toward bias because someone looked different.
With the haunting reality of black people getting respect in Europe long before they did here and redheads not having to worry about bias in America, we can perhaps expect redheads to dominate everything here in America by the next decade.
We’ll just hope that those powerful redheads won’t turn out to be fraudulent redheads via the magic of hair dye...
Sources:
http://listverse.com/people/top-25-famous-redheads/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6725653.stm
