Month: July 2025

In my last essay I noted that those who have power in the United States tend to be white, male, straight, and (profess to be) Christian. Given this fact, it might seem odd that some argue that these groups are the real victims in the United States.

Contrary to the evidence, it is now often claimed that white people are the real victims of racism. It is true that white Americans have lost certain advantages arising from being perceived as white. In 1865 slavery was abolished and in 1870 voting rights were no longer restricted by race. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 also resulted in a relative loss of white advantage. As would be imagined, only racists point to these as examples of whites being the real victims of racism. But some whites believe they are now the real victims of racism.

When pressed for contemporary evidence of how whites are the real victims of racism, people typically point to things like affirmative action, Black Lives Matter, criticism of systematic racism, and the fact that Kamala Harris was the Democrat’s presidential candidate. I do not think that most of my fellow white folk are lying when they claim they believe they are the real victims of racism. But I think they are in error. The obvious reason is the overwhelming evidence of systematic racism in the United States is for racism whose targets are not white. I do get why white people can honestly believe they are the real victims. There are ongoing efforts to convince white people that criticism of systematic racism and efforts to offset the negative impact of centuries of racism are racist. There is also the “clever” tactic of accusing people of being racist when they acknowledge the role of the racist’s conception of race as a factor in addressing racism. To pre-empt a likely fallacious appeal to anecdotal evidence, I know individual white people can be victims of racial discrimination. In addition to condemning that as morally wrong I will also note that my concern here is at the group level rather than focusing on anecdotes. It is consistent with white folks like me generally having an advantage because we are perceived as white that some specific white people face real racial discrimination.  And discrimination of this sort is wrong.

Contrary to the evidence, it is also now claimed that men are the real victims of sexism. It is true that men have lost many advantages relative to women. In 1920 women got the right to vote in the United States. There have also been laws passed to protect women at work and at home. Divorce has changed over the years and men (have mostly) lost the “right” to rape their wives. As would be expected, few would point to these as examples of how men are the real victims of sexism. When pressed, common examples involve references to the Me Too movement, certain feminists bashing men, strong female characters in media, changing gender roles, the rights of fathers relative to those of mothers, the charge of toxic masculinity, and Kamala Harris.

It must be acknowledged that there are some real issues with sexism against men; a good example being concerns about fathers’ rights. Men can be victims because of their sex: men suffer the heaviest casualties in combat and far more men than women are killed or injured in workplace accidents. At this point, you might be thinking that I have refuted my own view because I just argued men can be more likely to be harmed because they are men.

I must acknowledge that men are victims of sexism, but they are not generally the victims of the sexism of women. that is, it is not women who are the main cause of the suffering and death of men because they are men. It is the sexism of other men. Men are more likely to die and be injured in certain jobs because there are more men working those traditional male jobs. As an example, more men die in commercial fishing accidents than women because more men work in that field. More men die in battle because other men tend to send them to die in battle.

Rather than engage in a debate over who is being harmed the most by sexism, I agree that men and women are brutalized by sexism and that these problems need to be addressed. As such, men and women are both the real victims here. But what about straight people? Are we the victims of oppression?

Contrary to evidence, it is often claimed that we straight people are the real victims of discrimination. It is true that same-sex couples gained the legal right to marry in 2015 and there are some protections in place against discrimination based on sexual orientation. There is still open opposition to these legal rights and protections and opposition is often cast in terms of how gay rights somehow hurt straight people. For example, one stock argument against same sex marriage was that allowing it would be harmful to different sex marriages; something that absolutely did not happen.

But there are cases in which people are discriminated against because they are straight, which raises real moral concerns about hiring ethics. I do acknowledge the obvious: individual straight people can suffer from discrimination. But this is consistent with the social and legal advantages that arise from being straight in the states. As such, while a straight person can be a victim of discrimination, we straight people as a class enjoy significant advantages. But what about we Christians? Are we being oppressed in America?

While Americans generally recognize that discrimination exists against religious minorities, about 50% of Americans believe that evangelical Christians face discrimination. While the United States freedom of religion and often practices the separation of church and state, Christianity is the dominant religion. As such, some effort is required to claim religious discrimination against Christians in general.

As evidence of discrimination against Christians, people often cite Fox News unrelenting absurd war on Christmas propaganda.  It is absurd that people even need to try to refute what is obviously untrue. After all, Christmas  effectively rules the United States from late October until early January. Most of the other “evidence” of discrimination involves cases in which the separation of church and state is enforced, cases in which religious employers are not allowed to discriminate against employees or customers, and similar cases in which Christians are not allowed an exception to the law. While these do show that the dominance of Christianity in government, society and business has declined, this is not evidence of discrimination.

As in the other cases, individual Christians can face religious discrimination. However, this is consistent with Christianity being the dominant religion in the United States. The same survey in which 50% of those surveyed claimed that evangelicals faced discrimination only 15% claimed that being an evangelical hurt a person’s chances of getting ahead, while 63% agreed that being a Muslim hurt a person’s chances of getting ahead (31% said it hurt chances a lot). I do agree that religious discrimination is real and oppose it but it is wrong to claim that as a group Christians are the victims here.

In closing, while a person from any group can be a victim, the groups discussed generally enjoy advantages and are not the “real” victims. But it is not a contest to be the real victim: we should be morally concerned with human suffering regardless of which group a person belongs to. But we should not be disingenuous when discussing which groups have advantages. You might be wondering why this series is entitled “Mighty Victims.” This will be answered in the next essay.

The people who have power in the United States tend to be white, male, straight, and (profess to be) Christian. This can be confirmed by a cursory look at who holds top positions in government, business, and academics. Membership in these groups confers advantages that increase the odds of having power. Before getting on with the discussion, I need to pre-empty some likely straw person attacks on my view.

First, even belonging to all four groups is no guarantee a person will have power. After all, there are straight, white men who have faith in Jesus yet are struggling with poverty and are powerless. Second, people do have power despite not being members of these groups. For example, I am aware that Oprah and Beyonce exist.  My claim is moderate: membership in one or more of these groups confers relative advantages while being outside of one or more of these groups can confer relative disadvantages. This can be illustrated with an analogy from gaming.

Imagine a basic game rule: to succeed at something (such as getting a job or hitting a monster with a sword), you need to roll a set number or higher on a die. This represents the role of chance in real life. In most games, you can get pluses and minuses to your roll, based on various factors. For example, if your character is related to the king, you might get a plus when rolling to talk the city guard out of arresting you for the bar fight. If your character belongs to an unpopular band of rebels, you might suffer a minus when rolling to convince the city guard to not attack you when they catch you speaking out against the king.

Looking at real life like a game, membership in one or more of these groups would confer a plus on some rolls and not being in these groups might confer a negative on some rolls. To address some more likely strawman attacks, I am not claiming that being in one of these groups always gives an advantage in every possible situation. Nor am I claiming that being outside of these groups always confers a disadvantage in every possible situation. My claim is that a person gains more advantages from being a member of these groups relative to other groups and this is consistent with cases where membership in one of these groups might not yield an advantage or even be a disadvantage. For example, a white male would be at a disadvantage when trying to secure a literary prize for minority female authors. But that same white male would often enjoy many advantages relative to minority women, such as how seriously their views are taken at work.  Pointing out a few examples in which white, straight, Christian men do not have an advantage (or might be at a disadvantage) does not refute the general claim that membership in these groups confers general advantages in the United States.

It is important to note that I am taking these advantages and disadvantages to be, as I have said, like pluses and minuses on random rolls rather than factors that always decide the outcome of events. As a made-up example, imagine that getting a good job requires rolling a 15+ using a 20-sided die. Imagine that for various reasons, such as bias, race and sex are factors that impact your chance of being hired. Put in made-up game terms, imagine that because of bias, being a man would give you a +1 on the roll and being white would also give +1 on the roll to get hired. A white man would make the roll with a +2, a black man would make it with a +1, a white woman would roll with +1, and a brown woman would make the roll at +0. Any one of them could succeed (0r fail) on the roll. But imagine hundreds, thousands or millions of people trying to get good jobs: even small relative advantages will have a significant impact on the overall results. If the relative advantages are larger, the impact will be even more significant and will result in a noticeable difference when large numbers of people are involved. This is what the United States looks like. As such, it makes sense to believe that membership in certain groups confers meaningful advantages in life. Again, these advantages do not guarantee success, nor do they utterly exclude others from succeeding they just rig the rolls, to go with the gaming analogy.

Interestingly, there are those who claim that the members of the above groups (straight, white, male, Christian) are the real victims today not the groups who are underrepresented in having power. I will turn to this subject in the next essay in this series.

As the death toll from COVID-19 rose, people on social media started asking if anyone personally knew someone who had gotten COVID or died from it. I first thought they were curious or concerned but then I noticed a correlation: people who asked this question tended to be COVID doubters. For them, the question was not a sincere inquiry but a rhetorical tactic and an attempt to lure people into fallacious reasoning. In this essay I will look at this sort of question as a rhetorical tool.

This question can be raised about things other than COVID, so the generic question is “do you personally know anyone who X?” Used as rhetoric, the purpose is to garner either a “no” responses or no response at all. If this succeeds, it can create the impression that X is rare or does not occur. It can also create the impression that X is not serious. In the case of COVID, one goal was to create the impression that COVID is rare. Another goal was to create the impression that it is not that bad. Future pandemics will see the tactic used again.

Rhetoric is logically neutral in that it neither counts for nor against the truth of a claim. Its purpose is to influence feelings, and this is often aimed at making it easier to get people to accept or reject a claim. To use an analogy, rhetoric is like the flavoring or presentation of food: it makes it more (or less) appealing but has no effect on nutritional value. As flavoring and presentation is compatible with serving nutritional food, rhetoric is compatible with serving plausible claims and good arguments. Rhetoric can be used to influence an audience to accept a true claim. For example, a person who wants to protect sharks might address worries about shark attacks by asking the audience if anyone has been attacked by a shark. They are hoping that no one will say “yes” and plan on using that to make the audience receptive to their boring statistics showing that shark attacks are incredibly rare. 

There is an obvious risk in using this rhetorical device: it can backfire if someone says “yes”, especially if they tell a vivid story. Psychologically, people are influenced more by anecdotes (especially vivid ones) than by dull statistics. This underlies the fallacies of anecdotal evidence (rejecting statistical data in favor of a story) and misleading vividness (estimating likelihood based on how vivid an event is rather than based on how often it occurs). In the case of the shark example, if someone stands up and says a shark bit their arm off, then this will probably outweigh the statistical data about shark attacks in the minds of the audience. As such, this method can be risky to use.

If this tactic backfires and you are making a true claim, you can try to get the audience to accept the statistical data while honestly acknowledging that rare events can occur. If this tactic backfires and you are trying to deceive the audience, then there are various rhetorical tactics and fallacies that can be used. One tactic is to launch an ad hominem attack on the person who says “yes” and the usual approach is to accuse them of lying. If the attack is successful, this can make the rhetoric even more effective as those who fall for it will tend to reject anyone else who says “yes.” This is, of course, unethical.

It must also be noted that this sort of rhetoric can also be aimed at getting a “yes” response, though this is less common than the one aimed at getting “no.” The same general principles apply to this version.

If you want to be a critical thinker, you should recognize the rhetorical device that proves nothing. It must also be noted that its use disproves nothing because it would be an error to reject a person’s claim because they use this (or any) rhetoric. While rhetoric is neutral, fallacies are always bad, and this sort of question can be seen as being fallacy bait. That is, it is aimed at getting people to use or fall for fallacious reasoning.

One possibility is that the question is aimed at getting the audience to engage in the fallacy of anecdotal evidence. This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a very small number of cases. The fallacy is also committed when someone rejects reasonable statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single example or small number of examples that go against the claim. It has the following forms:

 

Form One

Premise 1: Anecdote A is told about a member (or small number of members) of Population P.

Conclusion: Claim C is inferred about Population P based on Anecdote A.

 

Form Two

Premise 1: Reasonable statistical evidence S exists for general claim C.

Premise 2: Anecdote A is presented that is an exception to or goes against general claim C.

Conclusion: General claim C is rejected.

 

It can also be used to lure people into accepting or making the hasty generalization fallacy. This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample that is not large enough. It has the following form:

 

Premise 1: Sample S, which is too small, is taken from population P.

Conclusion: Claim C is drawn about Population P based on S.

 

The person committing the fallacy is misusing the following type of reasoning, which is known variously as Inductive Generalization, Generalization, and Statistical Generalization:

 

Premise 1: X% of all observed A’s are B’s.

Conclusion: Therefore X% of all A’s are B’s.

 

The fallacy is committed when not enough A’s are observed to warrant the conclusion. If enough A’s are observed, then the reasoning would not commit the hasty generalization fallacy. As you might have noticed, anecdotal evidence and hasty generalization are similar: both involve drawing a general conclusion based on a sample that is too small.

The “do you personally know anyone who X?” question can be used to lure people into making or accepting these fallacies in the following ways. If a few people respond “no”, then these can be taken as anecdotes that “prove” that X does not happen often (or is not serious). These “no” responses could also be taken as “disproving” a claim that is based on good statistical evidence. They could also be used as the basis of hasty generalization. For example,  to infer that because a few people said “no” to a question on Twitter, then the same holds true for the general population. A lack of responses could also be used as “evidence” in a hasty generalization. For example, someone might reason like this: no one responded “yes” to a question on Facebook, so the answer must be “no” for the general population.

While I have been focused on people raising the question in contexts in which they can get an answer, the tactic can be used in one-way communication as well (such as a YouTube video or televised speech). A person can ask this sort of question in the hope that their target audience will be influenced. For example, a politician might ask “do you personally know anyone who has died of COVID?” in the hopes of getting the audience to believe that the COVID death toll presented by credible media sources is exaggerated.

It must be noted that the same fallacies can be committed with “yes” answers. To illustrate, if a few people respond with “yes” to a Twitter question, it would also be an error to generalize to the entire population. It must also be noted that if the question is being asked in a properly conducted survey that has a large and unbiased sample, then this would probably not be intended to lure people into a fallacy. The conclusion of such a strong generalization would be reasonable to believe. Of course, the conclusion might be that many people believe something that is untrue, but it would be reasonable to believe that many people (mistakenly) believe that untrue claim.

The tactic of using this rhetorical question to bait people into fallacies is most effective when the X is something that is statistically uncommon so there is a good chance that an individual would not personally know someone who X. If X is common or the truth about X is well accepted, then this tactic will usually fail. For example, asking “do you personally know anyone who has heart disease?” would not be an effective way to get people to engage in fallacious reasoning about heart disease. This is because many people know people who have heart disease, and it is well known that it is common. As such, this tactic usually requires an X that is not too common, and which is not well known. But it is possible to undermine belief and make this tactic work.

This tactic can be effective in situations in which an occurrence is significant or serious, yet it is uncommon enough that many people will not personally know someone who has been affected. Take, for example, COVID-19. Back during the early days of the pandemic, I had 826 friends on Facebook. At that time, I personally knew two people who had been infected and did not (yet) personally know anyone who had died. As such, it would have seemed almost reasonable to infer that COVID-19 was not a big deal. However, I also do not know anyone personally who was killed on 9/11. Although I personally know several people who are active duty or veterans, I do not know anyone personally who was killed in action. I could go through lists of causes of death or serious injuries/illness and note that I do not personally know anyone who died or was other harmed. But it should be obvious that it would be an error to infer that such things do not happen or that they are not serious. In the case of COVID, it is not surprising that I did not personally know someone who died in the early days of the pandemic. Given the scope of who I personally know, it was statistically unlikely that a person who died of COVID would be within that small group. But it does not follow that the death toll from COVID presented by reputable media sources was untrue nor does it follow that COVID was not serious. After all, few would question that 9/11 occurred or was not serious because they did not personally know someone who died that day.

In closing, my main point is to be on guard against being misled by questions like “do you personally know anyone who died of COVID?” While they might be asked sincerely, they can be a rhetorical tactic aimed at baiting you into a fallacy. As the next pandemic is fast approaching, we can expect to see this tactic deployed again.