Ginger Lives Matter Ginger Red Head Person T-Shirt

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Some anti-racist activists have spent the last year explaining that racism isn’t simply prejudice based on how one looks, but a system, much like capitalism, communism, and socialism, put in place by those in power around a specific set of ideas – in this case, racist ones.

It assumes that all forms of discrimination are the products of individual bigotry and irrational prejudice rather than structural and institutional divides. Redheads worldwide yesterday celebrated Kiss a Ginger Day, established in 2009 in a bid to “offset the far less fun Kick A Ginger Day that takes place in November”, explained daysoftheyear. But when you grow up in an area that is so predominantly white and are already made to feel different, you just do your best to fit in. Gonna Miss You Nigs” was written on the back next to jokes about golliwogs and messages of good luck. The pair’s standard response to those with genuine concerns about mass gatherings in a health pandemic, during a lockdown, was to keep explaining that social distancing was being strictly adhered to – two-metre grids were hand-chalked by Gueye and Eldridge-Tull on the site – and that PPE was being provided to anyone who didn’t have any.

But “unfortunately, there is a long history of making fun of people with ginger hair in the UK”, said Great British Mag, a site for international students. Gueye was repeatedly told to go back to where she came from if she didn’t like it and that she would be responsible for bringing harm to Lydney residents. And so it was, that on the last day of school where it is tradition for year 11s to scrawl goodbye messages on one another’s school shirts, Gueye took home a shirt covered with the N-word in giant block capital letters across the front.

There could be no gatherings of more than six people at the time and we should not have endorsed it. Still, on 10 June, an online petition was set up to stop the event going ahead on the grounds that it was unsafe and high risk in the middle of a pandemic. Their feelings are that Ariel isn’t just meant to have red hair, she’s meant to be the sort of person who tends to have naturally red hair – a white person. When they first spoke to the Observer last year, Gueye and her friend Eleni Eldridge-Tull, also 25 and a PhD student, were organising a Black Lives Matter event in Lydney due to take place on Sunday 20 June.

Anti-ginger prejudice and bullying is real and harmful, but the idea that it equates to these systems of oppression is fundamentally flawed. Now 25 and on the verge of finishing her English degree at Manchester University, Gueye has become a local community organiser and is more visible than ever in the town where she was born and grew up. And so is a backlash of sorts, after Halle Bailey, an African-American singer, was cast in the main role.

One woman messaged: “We are a positive [business] and positive people and have found our community to be the same”, as if discussion on achieving racial and social justice might not actually be a positive thing. And if Disney fans should get cross about anything, it’s that nobody thought of casting Lizzo as Ursula the Sea Witch. Later, she would make Eldridge-Tull gasp by posting: “He couldn’t breathe, now we can’t speak”, in a reference to Floyd’s murder by a police officer. There may be some truth in that, but those roots are now buried as deep as the recessive genetic mutations in our MC1R proteins.

Earlier this month, Gueye and Eldridge-Tull ran for Labour in district and local council elections respectively, determined to make change through local policy. It assumes that all forms of prejudice and discrimination are equal and occurring in the same context when they really do not.

When Gueye posted a picture of her school-leaver’s shirt on Instagram last year, one of her schoolfriends wrote that it was outrageous, and that she was impressed with everything Gueye was doing. Giving young black women a role model in the new Ariel won’t fix those problems, but it certainly won’t hurt to give them what I had growing up: the extra confidence boost of seeing a bit of themselves on screen. Others are of the mindset that Ariel was a wonderful role model for young ginger girls, and this casting is a loss for them.

Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, was loathed by the press, sure, but she never faced such threats because of her flaming red hair.