South Park has both sparked outrage and won applause for its irreverent and often crude brand of satire. (Comedy Central/Associated Press)

A boy in northern B.C. singled out because of his red hair was bullied at school Thursday in an incident that appears to have been incited by a group on the social networking site Facebook.

The Facebook group declared Nov. 20 Canada-wide "Kick a Ginger Day" following a recent episode of the television cartoon South Park that poked fun at red-haired children, referring to them as "nasty" and "born with a disease."

A student with red hair at D.P. Todd Secondary School in Prince George was kicked in the legs and had to be sent home as a result, said Lyn Hall, chairman of the Prince George school board.

"It's absolutely ridiculous and disgusting that something like this would happen," he said.

"[What] I've been able to piece together was Kick a Ginger Day was a result of some type of a show … that's how it all got started."

Hall said the school principal has identified the student who carried out the prank and is considering suspending the prankster.

"Anytime you have any type of bullying, you know, we don't differentiate between a joke and actual bullying," he said. "If you carry out this type of incident, we need to treat it very seriously, and we do."

Stirring up controversy and pushing buttons have been part of South Park since the satirical U.S. series debuted in 1997 and began chronicling the lives of foul-mouthed schoolchildren living in a fictional Colorado town.