The Six Letter Word

Years ago, I watched a comedy show by a comedian named Tim Minchin – during his performance he started to sing a song that he named ‘Prejudice’, whilst playing the piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw

He he talks about a ‘modern society and a word that is taboo, a word that has been used throughout history to abuse, oppress and subdue’ – a six letter word.

Six seemingly harmless letters that have been arranged in a way to form a word. A powerful word that has enslaved those who have heard it.

A couple G’s, an R and a E, an I and a N.

Listening to the performance you are made believe he is singing about the prejudice of black people alluding to the N – word. He shocks the audience finally saying the word, expecting the N – word instead he says Ginger.

I remember this blowing my mind and being fascinated by the connections between both black people and those with ginger hair.

In my opinion – Both are judged by their appearance and our profiled. When growing up for every ‘token black guy’ there was (if my memory serves me correctly) a ‘token ginger guy’.

And for as long as I can remember their has been a comment about my race:

• Can you grow an Afro?
• Where do you live… no, I mean where are your family from?
• Can I touch your hair?
• Can you speak Jamaican?
• How do you say ‘bacon’ in Jamaican… ‘beer – can’?
• Do you burn in the sun?
• Do you like rice and peas?
• I love Jerk chicken.
• Can you teach me how to Dougie?

Honesty, the list goes on.

I’m pretty sure people with Ginger hair must get the same stick and asked many of the same questions – stereotyped as Irish or Scottish, loving Irn Bru, asked if their hair glows in the dark etc.

So all this got me thinking, what if there was a parallel world where skin colour wasn’t a signifier of your race but your hair colour was?!

In my head I started to imagine this world with Gingers representing Africans, Europeans being blonde and Asians being Brunettes and with the skin colour of these races being as varied as hair colour is to us.

In this world I can see ghettos of ginger people with areas that are populated with only Blondes a few Brunettes and one or two Gingers.

Going by this, a lot of gingers in the US will be in Jail with a mostly Blonde society. Ginger on ginger crime may be on the rise.

I can also envision a society where youths and many adults are insecure about their hair colour, like many are in our reality with their skin – using cosmetics, tanning to make themselves darker and bleaching to make themselves lighter. People will dye their hair as a way to mask their race and conform to another.

With an endless colour palette there’s also a chance subcultures of different coloured haired people might emerge relating to different areas of pop culture.

They might even be a religious faction of hairless radicals that have formed to rise against this capitalist system that is in place creating materialist nations.

I believe this parallel world concept would make an interesting watch for film or TV. Showing people in a satire way the errors and rights of society and how ridiculous our prejudices are that a feature can determine your opinion of a person when really there is only one race — the Human race.