After a rash of schoolyard attacks left scores of red-headed children beaten and bruised, parents in the US, Canada and the UK are shocked and appalled by the rising tide of anti-ginger violence.

The attacks were said to have originally been inspired by an episode of South Park that aired in November of 2005, but have since mutated into a global phenomenon. In the episode, the character Eric Cartman claims that "gingers" are diseased and inhuman. But after his friends bleach his skin and dye his hair red while he's asleep, Cartman does a volte-face and becomes the leader of a genocidal ginger uprising.

The writers of South Park were clearly attempting to satirise hate groups, but the episode inadvertently spawned the "ginger kids" internet meme, which has served to amplify and spread pre-existing prejudice. Although these online jabs were initially meant to be humorous, often taking the form of mock inspirational posters, the meme turned violent in 2008 after a 14-year-old Canadian created a Facebook group that established 20 November as "Kick a Ginger Day".

The group was deleted soon after authorities learned of its existence, but by that point the webpage had received enough traffic for Kick a Ginger Day to go viral. Now in its second year, this year's incidents have spread as far as the Isle of Man, indicating a cultural momentum completely independent of the original context. But while one Canadian judge blamed a "vulgar, socially irreverent" South Park for the violence, there is nothing new about gingerism. Rather than an isolated case, Kick a Ginger Day is best interpreted as the latest flare-up of what many consider to be the last form of acceptable prejudice.

For centuries, even millennia, non-gingers have continually expressed their distaste for all things copper-top. The only difference between the red-headed-witch-burnings of the 15th century and the grade-school drubbings of today is that superstition has been replaced with crudely applied science. Since their genes were decoded in 1997, gingers, once regarded as vampiric by their oppressors, are now dismissed as mere genetic defects doomed to eventual extinction.

This attitude is in critical need of reappraisal. Gingers are more than potential sunburn victims cloaked in a galaxy of freckles and topped off with a wild streak of bright orange hair. They are living metaphors for the fragility of our species and the universality of individual perseverance. The adversity faced by the average ginger can, in fact, be inspirational and beneficial, but ginger kids shouldn't be expected to endure violent persecution just because they have a mutated MC1R gene.

Less than 2% of the world is full-on ginger, but many of us, regardless of race or religion, contain partial ginger genetics. Now is the time for these closet gingers to stand up against the further proliferation of Kick a Ginger Day, a heinous fad that is tantamount to racism. I hold such a strong opinion on the subject because I am one. I am ginger. My father, a Scotsman, is a full ginger. But my mother is blonde; a pigment combination that has has allowed me to live a double-life similar to the that of Anatole Broyard. My hair is technically "strawberry blond-brown" but everything south of my scalp is a rusty red. Which means my gingerness remains shrouded if I stay clean shaven and don't take off my clothes. But no longer. From this point on, until it becomes physically uncomfortable or I get a girlfriend, I am making the personal choice to not shave as a gesture of solidarity.

If we allow the next generation of ginger kids to be alienated and victimised, what will happen to the Lionhearts, the Churchills and the Lohans of the future? Malcolm X, one of the 20th century's most influential gingers, put it best when he said: "I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their colour."

And the same should go for hair colour.