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A _____________? of redheads.
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By:
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steve
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Mood:
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imperialistic
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Date:
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06/24/2007 19:47:00
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Music:
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None
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What to do you call it when you get a whole bunch of redheads together in one place? Maybe more important, can you get a bunch of redheads together in one place? There's a great thread in the forums started by TheMachine that prompted this longer rumination.
It's really pretty cool to see from this site that other redheads like to hang out with other redheads. For one because I know the heady feeling of walking down the street with 4 or 5 other redheads. It's like a biker convention, or a scientologists conference, a little loud, a little freakish, and all sortsa spectacular. For two because being a part of this this site, I often wonder just how far others are interested in taking the whole redhead identity thing. People love to hang out with their friends on places like MySpace (have you heard of it?), and we're all making redheaded friends here, but how often do redheads hang out with redheads offline? Really. I'm asking.
When a non-redhead sees a group of redheads, they instantly assume the easiest thing their brains can grasp onto: that they all must be related. But the same assumption wouldn't be made about a group of Latinos or African Americans. It's just as easy to assume that a group of Latinos and Blacks are friends as they are relatives because those minorities stick together, even outside of family. They share a culture and an identity against or across the majority surrounding them, and that helps reinforce and maintain bonds outside of blood. But aside from a gnetic feature, what do redheads have in common? Do redheads have an Identity (with a capital "I")?
Part of what makes this site so great is that the people here not only celebrate redheads but also seem to want to do what they can to define the redhead identity, to make red hair not just a novelty or a thing to admire as it passes into history, but something to define oneself by, to rally behind, and to relate to others with. Many redheads do that already to a certain extent. But if the world really is dividing into tribes, then redheads, at only 2% of the population, are small enough to be perfectly tribe-ready. But what makes a tribe? Similar interests? Shared location? Nationality? Race? Genetics?
Scientists at Oxford in the UK have found that a combination of the rarity of the recessive gene that causes red hair, as well as the global migration of large populations of the brown haired, is causing red hair to diminish. They estimate that by the year 2060, redheads may be entirely extinct. I'd be a fool to put all of my eggs in a dying basket, but I have always been about the long pony and the underdog. Redheads may be diminishing, but there's a lot that an be done to prevent that from happening.
One of the things that keeps me up nights is the thought of this site getting big enough that there will be enough redheads in contact with one another within specific geographic areas that there can be regular redhedd events. Can you imagine? Ten redheads together? Or twenty? Howzabout fifty!? Now that would be something to behold.
The Events section of Redhedd.com is there for exactly that purpose, to help us create and participate in redheaded events. It may be a little early for there to be enough redhedds close enough to hold one without a million dollars spent on 7000 gallons of gas, but I see it in my dreams.
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