Are Redhead Jokes Antisemitic?

A serious investigation of a bad premise.

Illustration: Lady Lilith by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Anyone with the misfortune of having an active Twitter or Tumblr account may have seen some variant of this argument. That is, “XYZ trope is antisemitic! Someone do something!” The specifics aren’t super important since its permutations are super common, especially when the subject is some artistic motif. Redhead jokes are antisemitic. Green-skinned creatures are antisemitic. Gnomes are antisemitic.

The thing is, the claim is often based on spurious, just-barely-Googled evidence. It is then completely severed from its context and delivered to an outrage-hungry audience, who accept and repeat it with startling frequency. The fact that the original author of the theory employed all the research skill of Alex Jones is irrelevant to its spread. Outrage drives the algorithm, not ponderous Substack essays about the fallacies of the argument.

In some sense, the joke is on me for expecting nuance from a Twitter thread. But all the same, it makes me mad, so let’s examine this line of logic, using redheadedness as an object lesson.

Rough start, and not because they cited Wikipedia. The linked article contains 158 words about antisemitism, and 895 about discrimination in Britain, which the article does not attribute to any given cause, except that “somebody with ginger hair will stand out from a crowd.” This larger paragraph is certainly more relevant to our understanding of Anglophone redhead jokes, as Britain’s former colonies inherited cultural norms and ideas from it, presumably including gingerphobia. Curiously, though, these 895 words do not feature in Tumblr user ineffectualdemon’s analysis. It’s almost like they started with a certain conclusion and worked backwards from it.

The antisemitism paragraph does mention British authors, but only authors. In the same way that Lovecraft’s racism does not serve as a microcosm of early 20th century racism, so too are Shakespeare and Dickens’ works useless for proving much beyond “one guy thought this at this time.” For example, did Dickens think all Jews were redheaded, conniving bastards, or did he just not much like redheads or Jews, and decided to combine the traits to pack a literary punch? This could probably be teased out through an in-depth study of Dickens, including his letters and stories, but he would remain a single viewpoint of a single point in time. Though you could argue that Dickens’ opinion carried an outsized import as a popular author, it is impossible to take him as more than a litmus test.

Shakespeare, for his part, lived during a time of general pro-Jewish sentiment in England as Jews began to come back to the country after a several hundred year long ban. Antisemitism in his works is a complicated subject, but it seems like a stretch to say that redheadedness was already associated with Jews based on Shakespeare’s work. Redheadedness is not particularly more common among us than Brits, and Jews had not been back in England long enough for those sorts of associations to be forged. Perhaps Shakespeare got the “Jews = redheaded = BAD” idea from books, but then Shylock is evidence that the people Shakespeare read thought that, not that his audience thought that. The distinction is important. By and large, the English language inherited its built-in assumptions about redheadedness from what these playgoers thought, not some random 16th century French asshole.

By cherrypicking like this, all you have proven is that redheadedness was linked to Jewishness in medieval Spain, a few old English books, and modern Russia. Not nothing, but then again, what does that have to do with today? Can you prove that a Shakespearian villain is a direct forerunner to the South Park bit about gingers not having souls? Maybe you could, with a long bibliography including his contemporaries’ points of view, literary criticism demonstrating how important he was, the political landscape of South Park, etc etc. You could even bring in evidence that I have excluded, such as sources about antisemitism in other countries, thus demonstrating the foolishness of my off-the-cuff assumptions about relevance. But without such an effort, the argument seems unlikely.

Occam’s razor suggests that people who are mean to Jews are also be mean in other, arbitrary ways. South Park is a perfect example of this. How many groups has South Park not made fun of? It is a virulently antisemitic work, and also makes jokes about ginger people. This is not because redheads are all Jews, but because the people who write and enjoy South Park kind of suck. The same can be true of historical evidence. It was also written by people, who on occasion kind of suck. With good research skills, it is possible to figure out what is true and false — and what could be either one, but hasn’t been proven one way or the other.

This is a simple analysis, based only on the evidence presented by the person with the burden of proof, who again is a Tumblr user who I got mad at. If I were invested in proving that redheaded jokes aren’t antisemitic, I could easily spend weeks delving through the vast literature of antisemitism to prove my point fully. But the important thing here is not that redheadedness could not possibly be related to Jewishness. Rather, I mean to say that the screenshot does not prove its claim in any meaningful way, and it’s troubling that so many people saw this post and now believe that innocent jokes are antisemitic. If ever they try to find a source for this belief, they’ll find themselves stumped.

This leads us to another, bitchier point: Who cares? Even if a historical argument was effectively made that anti-redhead jokes are rooted in antisemitism, that is not where they come from today. When a ginger kid is bullied for their hair color, or a woman is sexually harassed for being a redhead, it is not because the aggressor thinks on some level that their target is Jewish. It is because the aggressor is mean. (Hell, Jewish kids make ginger jokes.) Further, to my knowledge, modern antisemitic caricatures such as the Happy Merchant never feature red hair. This suggests that, even among the people most obsessed with race-sciencing Jewish features, red hair is not considered one.

So why the hell should we make a brand new association? There is no shortage of things that actually are antisemitic. I am deeply aware of such associations because, as a kippah-wearing Jew, it is important to be aware of when people are actively signaling that they hate me. That is an unfortunate fact of life, and indeed some of the signals are subtle. But by making up new “antisemitic things” wholesale, we become needlessly paranoid. The world seems a lot more hostile to me and mine if I believe that gnomes and innocuous jokes are actually slights against me, and it leaves me less on guard for actual dangers. If I spend my life angry at well-meaning people who poke fun at my hair color, where does that leave me when actual Nazis show up?

All of this to say, if you want to find out if something is antisemitic, don’t look on Wikipedia. It’s a good resource, but the wrong one for the purpose. A better one is the ADL Hate on Display database, which is curated by experts on the issue. More than that, don’t take random people online’s word for it when they say something is antisemitic. Evaluate their arguments, and do a few Google searches for yourself because they might just be downright wrong.