As a son of European immigrants, and a white male who was born and raised in Northern Indiana, lived & worked in IN, SC, AZ and now California, and who has lived more than 1/2 a century, I've seen many parts of the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. I've had countless civil conversations with men and women of various economic groups, ethnicities, ages, religions, and political affiliations, and usually I've learned something from each of those interactions.
When some of my high school friends embraced right wing politics during or after college, I did not follow them, and scratched my head as to what led them down that path? When some of my high school friends embraced progressive, socialist, left wing or anarchistic ideologies in college or thereafter, I was busy raising a toddler and being the sole bread winner in my new family's household. I could relate to the empathy my left leaning friends had for the under-dog, the little guy, the disadvantaged, forgotten, and under-class of society, since I grew up fairly poor myself.
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| My maternal grandmother would get government cheese at the Senior Center. |
At one time in my childhood, my parents applied for food stamps when my father was laid off from Rand McNally as they closed their Hammond IN book printing facility, and dad could not find gainful employment to support the family. We didn't get it, because we owned a home (with a substantial mortgage) and an old high mileage Pontiac Bonneville that dad used to get to work and then look for jobs when I was in Jr High School. But I understood what it was like to be poor, eat saltines for lunch at school, wear only hand-me-downs, and rely upon my maternal grandparents for food. I never got an allowance, and didn't understand why any parent would just give their child money that was un-earned. I had a paper route in 6th and 7th grades, delivering Chicago Tribune, Sun Times, and WSJ to a 8 square block area every morning, rain or shine, on my Schwinn banana seat bike - the Sunday edition of the Tribune was MASSIVE. So I have first-hand experience with pulling myself up by my "boot straps", having had nothing handed to me or my family from the state or federal government. But my father was able to get a loan for his house in a majority blue collar suburb of Chicago, where lots of Poles, Slavs, Germans, Hungarians, Irish, Hispanic, Italians, and Scandinavians lived. He got a unionized job in a book bindery before I was born, and for most of my childhood, we were in pretty good shape.
Just a few miles away, in Gary IN, most of the city was not in very good shape economically. The steel mills all began to close in the 1980s, and the tax revenues dried up in Gary, Easy Chicago, Hammond, and Whiting. Street lights, traffic signals, and general infrastructure broke down and didn't get repaired. The majority of Gary entered an economic malaise from which they've never really recovered. The majority of Gary was also African American. But what if the majority of Gary's citizens, instead of being African American, were caucasian and all had
red hair? I know this might sound silly or absurd, but give me a minute or two to explain.
Since Memorial Day 2020, when George Floyd was publicly murdered by Minneapolis police and recorded by civilians as it happened, all 50 states in the US, and many countries around the world, have seen widespread public protests against racism and police brutality against black and brown people. What if George Floyd, instead of being a large man who was a former NCAA basketball playing African American, was a large
red haired caucasian? And what if every black and brown person who have been beaten or killed or wrongly convicted by the legal system had
red hair and white (probably freckled)
skin?
Hold that thought in your head for a moment. Replace "black skin" with "
red hair and white skin". You can certainly SEE that someone has
red hair, up-close, or from far away. Many of them are originally from Scotland, Ireland, or Scandinavian countries, where the genes for
red hair are not rare.
Red haired folks are no different than brown haired, black haired, blond haired, or gray haired folks, but you can immediately see that they've got
red hair. Take off a
red haired person's hat, and there is no ambiguity that they are indeed
red haired. Many
red haired men often grow beards, which show off their
red hair even more.
As I kept hearing "all lives matter", and "blue lives matter" and white folks call in to shows on the radio (NPR) say "you have to first acknowledge there's discrimination AGAINST white people, before we can talk about black lives matter" it began to become very clear to me. Many white people have a BIG problem with the word "black" because of the systemic racism within their narrow view of society in which they were raised and have been living their whole lives, racism that Most of them are not consciously aware that they are practicing. So imagine a world for a moment, where there were
NO BLACK PEOPLE, whatsoever, and probably no brown people either, for this analogy to work and make sense for the white people who read it. Instead of African Americans being the most discriminated and disadvantaged folks in the United States,
RED HAIRED folks took their place.
Think about that, for minute, especially if you're white.
Say that all
red haired folks couldn't get VA loans when they left the military, because of the color of their hair. They couldn't live in nice neighborhoods, without the KKK burning crosses in their lawns, throwing bricks through their windows, and hanging nooses from their trees.
Red haired folks were denied job interviews, jobs, home loans, entry into the best schools, entry into non-red-haired "christian" churches in the Southern United States. They were severely beaten and hospitalized when walking their girl friend home at 3am in Charleston by 5 blond and brown haired guys wearing College of Charleston shirts. Imagine that
Red haired folks had been brought to the US in chains from Scotland and Ireland and Scandinavia and forced to work as slaves on cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar plantations, mostly in the South, but some in the rest of the country as well. When
red haired kids tried to enter segregated public schools in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi they had police dogs set on them, were fire hosed, and beaten, all because of the color of their hair.
What if
red haired folks created better music, more meaningful and soulful and powerful lyrics and rhythms, that they called blues, jazz, gospel and many other genres that blond and brown and black haired artists appropriated, imitated, and played for blond and brown and black and gray haired crowds in bars and concert halls and churches, where
red haired folks were not allowed to enter? What if blond and brown and black haired daughters liked
red haired boys, but were forbidden to hang out with or date those red haired boys? What if the N word was replaced with the
G word (
ginger)? And one
red haired person could call another red haired person the
G word, but no one else was allowed to use it in conversation, in a tweet, on-air broadcasts, in social media, or anywhere else without repercussions?
What if, in the Fortune 500 companies, there were only 4
red haired CEOs, even though
red haired folks comprised more than 10% of the US population? What if
red haired folks were 2.5X more likely to die from Covid-19 infections than their blond, black, brown, and gray haired counterparts? Because of the systemic fear, structural racism, and discrimination against
red haired folks, a large percentage of them worked in lower paying service professions, like security guard, bus driver, janitor, short haul truck driver, and health care assistants, and during periods of economic downturns, they were impacted disproportionately to their size in the general population? What if the relatively few economically successful
red haired folks who were judges, US senators, plant managers, or PhD scholars were routinely hassled and scrutinized, delayed by police, security guards, TSA, and retail store loss prevention personnel? "Why is a
red haired person like you driving this really nice car?"
If you were a police officer (city or county) in this all white society where
red haired folks were routinely discriminated against, you might be fearful of those citizens with
red hair. They have "fiery tempers" after all, and everyone knows "
red haired women are trouble" while all non-red haired men know that many
red haired women are "crazy". Broken tail light, failure to use a turn signal, "fitting the description" of a
red haired suspect... all of these would be opportunities to pull over a
red haired driver, interrogate them - often rudely and with excessive force - and take them in for further questioning when the
red haired driver, who was minding their own business and usually did nothing wrong, began to get irritated that they're being hassled for no reason whatsoever... oh... wait... yeah, they have
Red Hair. In the eyes of many of the blond, brown, black, and gray haired officers, most
red haired folks "all look alike".
What if in Tulsa OK on Memorial Day 1921, the most prosperous part of the city, known as "
Red Wall Street", 35 square blocks, was looted and then burnt down by non-red haired people, while Army Air Corp biplanes dropped petrol bombs on the district, with more than 400 r
ed haired men, women, and children, massacred? (without a single prosecution, and with zero insurance claims paid) What if in Chicago Illinois, on the Lake Michigan lake-front beach in 1919, a
red haired teenager swam over to the non-red-haired beach, across an imaginary line, that got him stoned to death by all the non-red swimmers? And then the non-red swimmers went on a rampage killing 150
red haired citizens, and burnt down 1.1 billion dollars worth of
red-haired owned homes and businesses in Chicago? What if all
red haired men were called "boy" or "uncle", instead of "mister" or "sir" when they were spoken to by someone with blond, brown, or black hair.
So if you personally have a problem with the phrase "Black Lives Matter", as I first did many years ago the first few times I heard it in my 40s, where I kept telling myself "no, all lives matter, not just black ones" ... then you really should stop for a moment, replace "Black" with "
Red" and remember this context. Think about the analogy I make here, about a country where everyone is white (no black or brown people whatsoever), but the
red haired citizens consistently the short end of the stick, a raw deal, a violent and forceful shove back down the ladder of success by all the other citizens who don't have
red hair. Even if they have boot straps, the systematic barriers non-red society has repeatedly placed in their way have made it remarkably hard for the vast majority of
red haired folks to succeed, prosper, and be on equal footing under the US Constitution, after the 13th Amendment was passed in December 1865, just 155 years ago.
If reading this has changed
even one person's mind or opened their eyes to the reality that the majority of African Americans live in the United States are subject to just because of the color of their skin, then it was worth writing.
Note: I have many
red haired friends, former class mates, colleagues, acquaintances and neighbors. All of whom are nice people. I hope such discrimination and anti-red-haired hatred is never focused upon them, as stated in this analogy. I was going to try "blue eyes" or "bald" or "left handed" but none of those aspects are instantly recognizable, from afar or by law enforcement officers, so I kept coming back to
red hair in my mind.
