Facebook group 'National Kick a Ginger Day' campaign prompts attacks on redheads

Some members of the Facebook group “National Kick a Ginger Day” prompt them to attack redhead children. The group is currently being investigated by the police.

The Facebook group “National Kick a Ginger Day” was motivated by a “South Park” episode in which a young character Cartman calls “Gingers”, calling the kids with red hair evil and soulless. This group was started by a 14-year-old kid from Vancouver. The urban dictionary definition for the “Ginger Kids” is as follows:

Red haired, freckled faced, and light skinned youths. They have no soul, must stay away from sun, are creepy, and... in the middle of the night, will come to get you. The gene is recessive, and can remain dormant until adolescence.

After the group was started, about 5,000 people joined it in Facebook. Their main campaign supposedly urged members to get their steel toes ready and kick the Ginger kids for a day that week. Some Canadian schools, however, warned the students not to take this campaign seriously, but apparently some did it already. Whether the Facebook group “National Kick a Ginger Day” was started as fun or not is not clear, but some of its members took it serious and allegedly kicked two sisters in Alberta, Canada. Some of them even posted messages in Facebook that they carried out attacks on redheads. Now the kid who started the group said it was meant to be fun not serious, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are taking it seriously and told the Vancouver Sun that they will investigate the incident and punish those involved. The police spokeswoman told the Vancouver Sun:

We do treat this sort of thing seriously...This is sort of inciting hate. It's a hate crime, really.

It seems this National Kick a Ginger Day fell at the same time as “Bullying Awareness” week in Canada. There is a rival group now in Facebook called “Who Thinks Kick a Ginger Day is stupid”, which has attracted about 365 members.