Kick a Ginger Day

Have you heard of this? November 20th was national Kick a Ginger Day. This is its second year. I must be out of the loop. My husband was telling me about it. As he was teaching, the vice-principal was going around and talking to each classroom. Last year it got pretty bad. My husband told me that one of his students had bruises up and down her calves. So this year, the school was taking a stance. “Kick a Ginger” and suffer the consequences.

Do you really want to kick Julia Roberts, Amy Adams, Reba McIntyre or Rupert Grint? Yes, you might want to kick Lindsay Lohan, Carrot Top or Ginger Spice, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with their hair colour.
I talked to my husband, then took a look around the internet. Kick a Ginger Day came from a South Park episode that said red-haired people were bad and had no souls. Apparently, the episode was supposed to satirize vampire movies and Children of the Corn. I’ve never seen the episode and have no desire to. Clearly their attempt at satire failed.

Last year, a Facebook group was created for Kick a Ginger Day. 40000 people joined! People with red hair found themselves in danger. Children were coming home with bruises because classmates were kicking them. Some police were classifying this as a hate crime; the only reason these people were attacked was because of the colour of their hair. Now, if you search Facebook, there are many more groups denouncing this act, encouraging you to “hug a Ginger” instead. I’m still shocked that people would kick a group of people just because a cartoon told them to do it.