NYPD Now Barred From Discriminating Against Redheads

Supervisors with the New York Police Department were warned earlier this month that redhead bias will now raise a red flag with the sensitivity police, the New York Post reported.

“We’re apparently victims now,” a police officer with ginger hair said. “We’re protected from discrimination.”

No lawsuit has been filed against the city, but the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said that a claim alleging unfair treatment over red hair would be taken seriously, since people with that color hair are found in higher numbers in Britain and Ireland.

Experts say that redheads make up 13 percent of the population in Scotland, while comprising less than 1 percent in most countries in Asia, Africa and South America.

“It’s an innocuous-seeming criteria,” the commission’s Justine Lisser said. “But if it has a ‘disparate impact’ on a certain racial group, red hair could be considered the basis of discrimination.”

Aside for a greater propensity for sunburn, there is nothing beyond superstition to support any differentiation between redheads and other people.

While the classification at first appeared to be a joke, one retired officer said that he was constantly roughed up as a kid and called a “red-headed devil.”

“You get abuse every day when your hair is red,” he said. “You get beaten and chased. You better learn how to fight.”

But a retired officer who said he was often called “Carrot Top” at his precinct said that he mostly enjoyed the good-natured jabs.

“To put redheads in a protective class — that’s ridiculous!” he said. “Toughen up.”

This article appeared in print on page D18 of the April 24th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.