Is 'Gingers Are Black' helpful or a weird way to get a cookout invite?
The connection between "Gingers Are Black" and comedian Druski's "white boy" skit
When I first saw “Gingers Are Black” trending on TikTok, I was confused. Then, I watched a video of a Black woman explaining why redheaded white people get treated with the kind of discrimination that Black people do — and a whole flood of videos from natural redheads co-signing this theory of white-on-white discrimination.
Sure, Malcolm X was a natural redhead too (hence the name “Detroit Red”), but finding natural redheads who are biracial or Black was not the main goal of this TikTok trend. ScorpioStellyla1meramera was referring to white people. I paused over this TikTok trend for a long time, trying to recall redheads who I personally know.
I don’t want your man, Redhead!
I could only come up with two: one co-worker who I thought was hilarious and by far the friendliest of a group of four other white girls in her work group. There was a sole Black friend in their group, but we could never get along for more than a day. As much as I initially liked the redhead, we fell out over something I would have never predicted.
She’d told me how much short, white boys were her type even though she was fairly tall. She never said who she was dating nor did I ask. But a few days later, I happened to be sitting with a short, white guy while he was training me to update a particular content management system. And that guy never crossed my mind. Why? He was already dating a brunette we also worked with. (I thought those two were cute together!)
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So, while I was sitting there, cackling away at some random joke he told and happily learning my new assignment, I saw a red ponytail flash by me and a woman sit on top of his desk in front of us — damn near blocking the computer. It was the strangest “stay away from my man” moment I’d ever seen in my life, and I was dumbfounded that she pulled this stunt at our job.
Talking way too close to his face, she invited him to her farewell party (she was getting ready to quit so she and four of the other girls — excluding the Black lady — could start a new job). When she walked away, she glared at me. And I was sitting there thinking, “Girl, this man couldn’t be less my type if he tried to be. You’re doing way too much.”
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The next time I saw her, she made a “joke” about how she would “cut me.” I raised an eyebrow, wondering what gave her this extra ounce of bravery (long before the Bon Qui Qui skit). I don’t recall exactly what I said, but it was something to the effect of “Don’t get your feelings hurt at work.” The shocked expression on her face and the stone-faced expression on mine let her know she’d gone too far with the threat disguised as a joke. My guess is she also wondered if I was on the scrappy side. (Spoiler alert: I am.) Meanwhile, I was wondering why we’d reached this level of unprofessionalism over a short guy I wasn’t into.
Memories of Pretty Pippi
I definitely did not want to include this lady in the “Gingers Are Black” crowd. But then I kept searching through my mental Rolodex and grinned, thinking of a childhood friend — a freckle-faced, redheaded, strawberry-smelling Italian girl in my predominantly Black elementary school. She reminded me of a prettier version of Pippi Longstocking — but only if Pippi Longstocking knew all the words to Crucial Conflict's “Hay” and Do or Die’s “Po Pimp.” (If you were a Black Millennial in Chicago, you know these songs. If you don’t, you absolutely lived in the suburbs.)
Just like that, I switched from being totally opposed to “Gingers Are Black” to wondering how my elementary school friend was doing these days. Similar to Druski’s “white boy that’s accepted by the hood,” I’m fairly certain that pretty much everybody in our classes — including the teachers — just looked at her like one of us (meaning Black people). Even when one of her uncles arrived to pick her up from school and opened his mouth, his voice definitely did not match the slick-haired, white guy talking. His walk. His clothes. His mannerisms. Black, Black and Black. He was not mimicking us. That was just him.