Young Red Haired Girl Portrait

In October 2010, Harriet Harman, the former Equality Minister in the British government under Labour, faced accusations of prejudice, after she described the red-haired Treasury secretary Danny Alexander as a "ginger rodent". Alexander responded to the insult by stating that he was "proud to be ginger". Harman was subsequently forced to apologise for the comment, after facing criticism for prejudice against a minority group.
Use of term in East Asia to refer to ethnic European people
The term ang mo (simplified Chinese: 红毛; pinyin: hóng máo; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: âng-mo͘) in Hokkien (Min Nan) Chinese means "red-haired", and is used in Malaysia and Singapore to refer to white people. The epithet is sometimes rendered as ang mo kui (红毛鬼) meaning "red-haired devil", similar to the Cantonese term gweilo ("foreign devil"). Thus it is viewed as racist and derogatory by some Caucasians. Others, however, maintain it is acceptable. Despite this ambiguity, it is a widely used term. It appears, for instance, in Singaporean newspapers such as The Straits Times, and in television programmes and films.