Whiter Than You

nostalgia_lj remarks here: "Donna is ginger. That's extra specially Caucasian." (Watch out for Doctor Who SPOILERS in the discussion.)

Here in Australia, I think my red hair does make me a target for racists - that is, they see a stranger who surely must have an Anglo or Anglo-Celtic background, and so must be safe to bitch to about Asians or whatever. So it may be fair to say that here in Oz, red hair is seen as the ultimate marker of Whiteness.

OTOH, I don't know if the same is true in other countries. Racism being the arbitrary set of divisions that it is, in previous times there were non-White redheads: in the US, Jews from Europe and immigrants from Ireland were not at first considered "White". In the UK, redheads are subject to sometimes severe harassment, which may be a hangover from English racism against the Celts. And of course, there are small numbers of redheads in certain African and Asian populations.

Do people in the UK really see red hair as "whiter than white"?