TSDG restaurant branding: Will McDonald's have a website for people with red hair?

You probably already know that Mc Donald's has a website for black people; African Americans or whatever the term du jour is.

I just found out - behind the times, I know, but this is the first time I've been aware of a corporate website that is particularly for with specific pigmentation.

TSDG has often created mirror websites in Spanish, French, German, Japanese and - my favourite, in Creole. So from a business point of view, if my clients decide that they want to have websites for people of different races, then that's just fine. Once the English language version is complete, we are happy to recreate your site in Swedish, Flemish or Finnish.

Oh, and you'll notice that I italicized language, because we British people would really appreciate a version with correct spellings (favourite, theatre, aluminium, speciality etc).

But why stop there? Now we have specific websites for people with certain pigmentation, let's please start having a specific website for us gingery, freckley people. (Yes, I know that there should also be sites for Asian people, Native Americans, Eskimos - or whatever the politically-corrrect terms is for Eskimos - pygmies, people with large noses, Martians (just in case), so all I am doing is making a plea for those of us with another different pigmentation - the gingery freckley ones.

We are underdogs; we are prejudiced against; we are a minority; we demand our own websites too!

What's interesting about this is that it demonstrates so well how an English JOKE (satire, sarcasm, whatever you wish to call it) can be taken seriously by other races (nations, nationalities, whatever you wish to call them ...).

As we all know, Wikipedia makes a habit of getting things terribly wrong. This is a quote from their page on red hair:

In modern-day UK, the words "ginger" or "ginga" are sometimes derogatorily used to describe red-headed people, with terms such as "gingerphobia" (fear of redheads) or "gingerism" (prejudice against redheads) used by the media. Some have speculated that the dislike of red-hair may derive from the historical English sentiment that people of Irish or Celtic background, with a greater prevalence of red hair, were ethnically inferior. Redheads are also sometimes referred to disparagingly as "carrot tops" and "carrot heads". "Gingerism" has been compared to racism, although this is widely disputed, and bodies such as the UK Commission for Racial Equality do not monitor cases of discrimination and hate crimes against redheads.

I should think not, too!

Wkikpedia continues:

This prejudice has been satirised on a number of TV shows. The British comedian Catherine Tate (herself a redhead) appeared as a red haired character in a running sketch of her series The Catherine Tate Show. The sketch saw fictional character Sandra Kemp, who was forced to seek solace in a refuge for ginger people because they had been ostracised from society.

It's a JOKE, you see. Yep, JOKE. I don't know the origin, but I think part of the blame, if blame is the right word, must be attributed to the BBC website and their article Is gingerism as bad as racism?

The lead paragraph says :

... "What's the difference between a terrorist and a redhead?"
"You can negotiate with a terrorist."

Go on then, tell me that's not a joke.

The best part though were the readers' comments:

From an American:
"There is nothing like this in the US where having red hair is not a precursor to having someone abuse you. Red hair is considered glamorous."

(Don't you love that 'there is nothing like this in the US"?)

From a British person:
"As the proud bearer of a mighty crop of red hair, I should like to remind the mousey coloured masses that on the two occasions during the last 500 years that this country was most in peril, redheads, namely Elizabeth I and Winston Churchill stepped up and met the challenge, of the Spanish Armada and the Nazis respectively. So enjoy your japes and easy insults if you will, but remember that fact the next time a redhead saves the nations's collective skin!"

But, to get back to the original thought, if you have a restaurant, please make sure that you have a politically-correct version of your website that will not offend us gingers, ginners, carrot-tops, "the milkman's", copperknobs ...

Eliminate any menu references to ginger, no ginger-glazed red salmon, please. That could be offensive, Try aromatic rhizome-glazed blush-hued salmon instead.

Thank you for your consideration.
Love,
Gingery, freckley grumpy old woman.