I mean... Bobby Caldwell? The number of reaction videos of people going "Wait... This dude is white?!" seeing the What you won't do for love video says it all.
I do believe he's a redhead too, unless I misremember.
Actually, gingers being considered "white" is a relatively new concept. They used to be pseudo enslaved (indentured servitude) and called "inside out n-words". There's a theory that our modern concept of racism as we know it today was born because of a psy op to prevent the Irish servants and black slaves from forming alliances, they purposely made them feel like different people.
Xenophobia is as old as time, but RACISM as this weird dumb almost random categorization that makes little to no sense, it's believed it comes from trying to make the Irish feel like they were better than the black slaves they were often in community with. The Irish weren't considered to be in the same "biological" category as the English 300 years ago, regardless of their amount of melanin.
That's why brown people tend to get along so well with the Irish. They're technically white nowadays, but they weren't always, and they're the only white culture that's not also a colonizer culture. We latinos LOOOOVE the Irish, they "get it".
Edit to add info you can look up yourself if you need sources:
This all comes from Bacon's Rebellion, which united landless and poor white servants alongside enslaved and free Africans in an armed revolt that burned Jamestown to the ground. Terrified by the collective power of this "giddy multitude," the planter elite deliberately restructured the social and legal order to fracture class solidarity. This was the invention of institutional racism, they literally codified race. You can read some more by smarter people than I here: https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/inventing-black-white
they're the only white culture that's not also a colonizer culture
I'm not sure how true that is under scrutiny. You have the Sami, Ukranians, Greeks, Albanians, and many more ethnic groups that actually experienced some level of colonization themselves, much like the Irish. This isn't to say that these groups didn't benefit from colonial structures (much like the Irish), but they also existed as underclasses - Greek and Albanians under the Ottomans, Ukranians under Russians, and Sami under Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns.
Now, this doesn't take away from your broader point. Hell, it might even reinforce it; "whiteness" has gone under several revisions to include more ethnic groups to prevent the underclasses from banding together, with those deemed "black" often being given the lowest wrung on society's ladder.
As a Greek...yeah. Ottoman rule is more recent than both your examples, but it obviously still happened. Alexander wasn't all that great to anyone not Greek, that's for sure
Well, that's fair I guess. It is truly such an arbitrary categorization. To me, the Sami are the same race (even if nowhere near the same culture) as the Norwegians, Finn and Swedes. Ukranians are Slavic-Caucasian, Albanians are caucasian, and I wouldn't call the Greek "non-colonizers" in the grand scheme of things haha.
I guess it's easy to make a mental distinction for "the Irish", because of the red hair phenotype. But truly racial categorization is bogus on a load of malarkey (I am very proud of this sentence, btw. I'm self taught in English, and I just realized I know what both these words mean).
Well yeah. That's the point. The people who were colonized and oppresed were the Irish. The Irish are mostly associated with having red hair. Thus, to this day, we still have redhead racial stereotypes (for example, "gingers have no souls" or "their hair is red because they were made by the devil"), stuff you still hear nowadays.
To me, the Sami are the same race (even if nowhere near the same culture) as the Norwegians, Finn and Swedes.
Finns, and Saami are closely related, but are not genetically/ethnically close to Scandinavians. (proto-)Uralic languages/peoples vs. proto-germanic. Aside from the influence of forced assimilation/colonization of both Finns and Saami by Swedes/Norwegians of course. Race is as a concept very arbitrary, but ethnicity not as much. And there is an objective ethnic distinction to be made here regardless of what our peoples represent "to you".
While colonization of the Sami people is a bit of a stretch (Norwegians were the first settlers even in the northernmost parts of Norway long before the Sami arrived), the efforts to destroy Sami culture was a century long effort that almost succeeded. Like 90% of the cultural heritage is straight up gone, despite modern efforts to revive it.
Prior to the 1800s, Norwegians had a pretty friendly and welcoming relationship with the various Sami tribes and Kvens. The rise of national romanticism was the primary driver of the ethnic cleansing, Norway needed to create and protect it's own separate identity from the Danish and Swedish. And diversity was considered harmful to the goal of going independent after nearly 500 years of being a Danish "colony".
None of that excuses Norway in their treatment of the Sami people, but I've always thought that understanding the motives behind heinous actions makes it easier to avoid anything like that happening again.
Thinking the Sami and other Scandinavians are the same race shows your ignorance.
They literally migrated as different populations. The Scandinavians (ethnic Swedes,Danes Norwegians) came from the south, the Sami people from the north.
But since races are bs you are right in that it is arbitrary. But as ethnic populations they have very different backgrounds, geographically how they got there, language and culture.
I was gonna say, back in the day black folks kinda put out an olive branch to Irish folks incoming who were treated as dirt, because they knew how it was. Then over time when Irish became more accepted...Lot of em forgot that.
This is one of those things I’ve heard and kind of “feel” as a red head who has lived in major US cities. But you put it into legit terms and backed it up so now I need to get a book and read about it lol
Do read about it, it'll blow your mind. You'll have a "so this all was... on purpose" moment that'll leave you staring into the void for a few days. I sure as fuck did.
As an Irish person, I've had mexican friends describe us as "the Mexico of Europe" (big catholic population, an affinity for alcohol, big families, laidback sense of humour) and I take it as a huge compliment tbh
The concept of the white "Caucasian" race is decently modern, too. It just used to be xenophobia all the way down. In the 1700s and 1800s, people tried to make it academic/scientific with the concepts of races, but a lot of it was simply some dude's published idea that was taken as fact.
Correct. Xenophobia and tribalism go back to before we tamed fire. But racial categorization as we understand it nowadays as a box to check, is brand spanking new and has 0 scientific basis
No, this is a reach and silly. Gingers can come from any caucasian culture.
A lot of the irish and scottish were active oppressors as well, they worked for the planters and generally did not have solidarity with black people because why would they? The system was working for them if there was those with less to lord over.
Gingers get discriminated/get the hate (AKA gingers have no soul, etc.) bc of the Irish oppresion specifically. Don't shoot the messenger.
Irish colonization -> Irish are seen as inferior -> Irish often have red hair -> gingers seen as inferior -> gingers get racially discriminated so much it becomes a permanent culture fixture so much so 400 years later there's even a southpark episode about it
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u/la_metisse Aug 13 '26
It’s always the redheads. The ginger man-black woman alliance exists for a reason.