Tolerating People Who Happen to Have Red Hair: An Explosive Problem

 

The argument that I am about to make can, to some degree or another, be applied to any minority group and not just redheads. This certainly includes people like myself who are Jewish and on the autism spectrum. There should be no mistake; the argument here is sound but it is undoubtedly a hand grenade that can take out anyone, particularly the person foolish enough to try wielding it. Besides the importance of a strong sense of individual rights, the other important lesson that I would hope that readers take from this exercise is that giving people the benefit of the doubt is an essential value for a liberal democracy.   

When discussing tolerance, it is important to distinguish between individual tolerance and group tolerance. While a happy medium is theoretically possible, any attempt to argue for tolerance for individuals is going to be undermined the moment we begin to think of these individuals as members of groups that are distinct from the political community as a whole.  

Take the example of hair color. Readers may recall the Sherlock Holmes story of the Red-Headed League where the villain tricks his redheaded employer into believing in the existence of an organization that gives money to redheads. This fraud is perpetrated in order to get the employer out of his shop for several hours every day, allowing the villain to dig a tunnel across the street into the vault of a bank. The humor of the story lies in the fact that it is patently absurd that some wealthy person would so identify himself with his red hair that he would leave his fortune to benefit total strangers simply because they share his hair color. 

Imagine that our society would suddenly develop a prejudice against redheads and passed laws that segregated people with red hair into separate schools, limited their employment opportunities, and forbade them to marry non-redheads. Fairly quickly, there would develop a community of red-haired people, who gather together because the rest of society rejects them. Other redheads would attempt to cover their red hair in order to operate within general society. For example, someone like me might diligently shave every day to cover the red streaks in his beard and get a signed and notarized document attesting to the fact that all of his grandparents were pure non-redheads. This would likely create further prejudices against redheads as they would be transformed into an unseen menace attempting to infiltrate "respectable" society. Now, non-redheads, in order to not become "tainted" with redheadedness, must be constantly on guard and check their friends and neighbors to make sure that they are not secret redheads. 

The obvious argument against discrimination against redheads is that there really is no such thing as redheads but only individual people who just happen to have hair with a red pigment. Having red hair does not interfere with being a citizen in a liberal democratic society. People with red hair can make use of their reason to faithfully hold public offices from juror to president and serve in the military. 

This is a powerful argument for legal equality but it comes at a price, mainly that we assume that redheads really are just a collection of individuals who happen to have red hair and that there really is no such thing as a redheaded collective. The moment we begin to suspect that red hair stands as a proxy for actual cultural differences and even for different ways of thinking then we have to ask ourselves whether we think there is actually something valuable about these cultural differences and whether we believe that such people are well suited to operating a liberal democracy alongside non-redheads. 

What can people with red hair do to convince us that there really is no such thing as redheadedness and that they should be granted full rights? Clearly, people with red hair should make a point, as soon as the law and society allow them, of not differentiating themselves from people with other hair colors. An obvious manifestation of this would be large-scale intermarriage. People with red hair should have no objection to marrying people who do not have red hair and be at peace with raising children who do not have red hair and in no way identify with redheadedness. Clearly, people with red hair should not form charitable trusts for the benefit of other people with red hair so no "Red-Headed Leagues." The only exception would be for insisting that people with red hair really are like everyone else and eagerly await the day when the very idea of redheaded organizations will be so unnecessary as to be deserving of parody.  

This lack of redheaded identity should also extend itself to the study of history. While redheaded (name of people who live in the country) history should be taught, it should only be in terms of the history of the persecution of people with red hair and how it came to an end. This history should not be taught in terms of a conflict between peoples of different hair colors. People without red hair should not be treated as villains. On the contrary, examples of non-redheads who worked to fight for redhead rights should be emphasized in order to make sure that non-redheads do not feel guilty and to give them historical figures to relate to. 

Since redheads do not really exist as a distinct group, discussions of the sufferings of people with red hair should be universalized as a lesson on the importance of not judging people based on their hair color. Redheads who insist on remembering their history of persecution and remain mistrustful of non-redheads, insisting instead on redhead solidarity, should be castigated for failing to learn from their own history, making them just as bad as the color supremacists who once persecuted them. Outside of the history of redheads in times and places where they have been persecuted, there should be no general history of redheads. The fact that there have been kings with red hair who lived thousands of years ago in faraway lands (like, perhaps, King David) should be of no interest to contemporary people with red hair. We all agree that people with red hair can become presidents as well as enter into unconstitutional treaties with foreign dictators, sabotage the nation's economy with trade restrictions, and father illegitimate children.  

If redheads are really just individuals with red hair, then there should be no need for culturally responsive teaching for children with red hair. Such kids do not think differently than anyone else as hair color has nothing to do with brain structure. Furthermore, there should be no need for children with red hair to see people who "look like them." The moment advocates for children with red hair start saying otherwise, it stops being obvious why such children should be allowed into regular classrooms in the first place. If these children really are different then, perhaps, they really should be placed in separate classrooms to be with their "own kind."  

To be clear, we can expect non-redheaded people of goodwill to extend redheads some degree of charity and tolerate minor acts of tribalism. This might be out of guilt for the hair colorism of their parents, admiration for redheaded music, literature, cuisine, and comedy, or simply a sense that all of this hair color nonsense will eventually blow over on its own. That being said, at some point, if people with red hair push their tribalism far enough, this spirit of charity will end. Non-redheads will decide that redheads are taking advantage of the liberal nature of the general society, demanding rights as individuals while acting as a tribe and engaging in "reverse hair colorism." 

In essence, any attempt by people with red hair to treat their hair color as something relevant to their lives licenses everyone else to take notice of their hair color and use it against them. The moment someone is different in any meaningful way then the Pandora's Box of better or worse for the functioning of a liberal democracy is irrevocably opened. Think of people with red hair arguing for tolerance as a group as Wiley E. Coyote using a jackhammer on the precipice that he is standing on.   

Contrary to popular belief, tolerance is actually quite difficult in a liberal democracy. In contrast, for example, to a monarchy ruling over a diverse collection of people's running their own day-to-day affairs, in a democracy your neighbor who is not like you gets to vote on issues that directly affect your life. Furthermore, classical liberalism implies a commitment to a set of values that have historically been far from ubiquitous within human societies. A liberal democracy in which there are groups that lack a baseline commitment to liberal values will quickly turn into a sucker's game leading to political collapse. If we do not believe that redheads really support individualism and private property for all people, regardless of their hair color, but are simply using liberal democracy and the tolerance of the general society to advance their particular agenda then we will have no choice but to embrace our own non-redhead identity at the expense of building a country for everyone.