Tesco Christmas card making fun of children with red hair

[Northernlebkuchen]

here

I can't believe they think they should sell something like this. So glad this woman got them taken out of our local tesco - now what about the rest of the chain?

I know two children horribly bullied because of their (beautiful) red hair. It's just the same as any other discrimination - breeds hate and misery

I'm in Scotland and a huge amount of my people want to marry a redhead so their kids will have red hair. It's gorgeous, why wouldn't you want it! And I'm betting that a huge amount of hair dye (after bleach maybe) is red/auburn/copper - call it what you will. It's lovely either way.

Maybe someone should make a card saying Santa even comes to children with plain old boring mousy brown hair... But then, that wouldn't be very amusing. I rest my case

Spiteful.

Especially featuring a child.

I dare say some ginger/black/irish/gay/whatever wouldn't 'mind' such a card. But most would.

How could they?

... how could Tesco do this, I meant.

I am ginger. I was bullied for it. Yet I find this card hilarious! Just like I find Catherine Tate's redheads' support group sketches etc very funny. I used to be a very insecure, sensitive person. But I grew some and got over it and have never been happier. All this fuss only goes to feed people's insecurities as far as I am concerned.

It's clearly a card designed to be given to an adult, and yes, I would question the morals of anyone buying it for a sensitive red-headed child, but all this uproar is drawing more attention to it that the card being on sale in the first place. There are all sorts of offensive cards out there. If you don't like them, don't buy them.

"It's clearly a card designed to be given to an adult," I don't think adults should be poking fun at children. This sort of line-crossing coarsens attitudes towards children in general, not just those with red hair. Using children as the butt of humour (?) is not fair.

yangimac that's a very good point about the anti-jokes. I ROFL laughing at a good |Irish joke, but many are just racist and offensive. The trouble is that red heads are still being accused of having no sense of humour if they object to insulting and offensive "jokes"

I heard about the card thing with a growing sense of helplessness. For myself as a child of a ginger and a mother of a ginger and being a ginger myself. I have wasted countless hours wanting to change the way I look and this furore brought it all back. It's a feeling, yes, misery and hatred that no one would really wish on anyone else. But 'ginger beer' is rhyming slang for 'queer' and that is another taboo. And the taunts and teasing are fuelled by curiosity.
When I visited China I was advised that the Chinese would be very suspicious of me for my hair colour and that I would have to smile alot and make the first move. That's what it must be like for ethnic people here, and as an ethnic minority in my own country I suppose I and many other gingers feel we should not have to do that. but if we want a society where equity and diversity are really valued maybe we have to accept some very subtle differences which may have been important when we were a more homogenous ethnic population have gone for a burton. It's to do with national identity. Red heads are allowed to be ridiculed as they(we) are on our own patch and it is expected that we are able to defend ourselves. But in the old days, so called, red heads would've been at war with dark headed people. Weren't the light headed Normans ruled by dark headed folk. I'll have to leave it there but thanks for reading.

I am worried about being over-protective of my son and wonder whether part of my Mum being over-protective of me was because she had been bullied about her hair. (She is dead now so I can't ask her.) This draws attention to the issue, which can only be a good thing, in the end, right??? In the meantime we could create / write/ illustrate or otherwise provide positive role models for children to get across the 'red head thing' which is simply that red heads have their own cultural identity and like everyone else.

Brief appendage to previous post - on a different topic - I can talk to my Mum although she is dead.

How Hagg? xxx

Riven, I am very glad that your DC haven't been bullied for having red hair - but I am starting to feel personally as though your continuing to repeat that point is somehow invalidating the fact that I and others were bullied for it. No doubt it is all part of my "oversensitivity and lack of sense of humour", but it is how I am starting to feel.

Just because it is outside your experience, doesn't make it any less real for those of us who have experienced it.

Nobody is being bullied by jokes. The jokes are the tip of the iceberg here. The fact that this sort of joke is acceptable makes singling out people because of red hair a bit more likely. And the jokes represent an attempt to normalise the phenomenon of picking on people because of their hair colour. The jokes are a sort of gateway drug, a 'one foot over the line' towards more serious disrespect.

Riven - I think I would come under the description of being an 'utterly average' child - no big/small feet or whatever but my ginger hair was a target and I was bullied horribly for it. This would not have happened had I been born with hair another colour. The bullying was directed at my hair colour. Believe me, in my experience gingers DO suffer more from bullying than children with any other hair colour.

Here's a couple of (short!) articles worth taking a look at. Seems like there is indeed more to the mocking of ginger people than just superficial bullying.

For some people this has been appalling.

I am ginger with dark-haired dh and 4 blond kids. I've had very little abuse because I live in the West Highlands where it's nearly normal. 14% of Scots have red hair, that's even more than Ireland. I think there's far more of us on the West coast.

Oddly, this card was never on sale in my local Tesco. (!!!)