Mass Murder
I'm sure most of you are aware of the recent shooting in Charleston SC, in which a white man motivated by racial hatred killed 9 black people. Predictably, many people are using this event to promote their political agendas. Some are using it to promote the view that white racism against blacks is a major problem in the US. Some are using it to promote gun control. Some are using it to promote censorship of beliefs they don't like. Some are using it to promote hatred against whites. It is always a fallacy to infer from an isolated incident to a general conclusion. Isolated incidents tell us nothing about the way things generally are. They are anomalies. Sometimes people see a pattern, real or imagined, in isolated incidents such as mass shootings. For example, one slogan says "Why is it always a white guy?", circulating with a picture of some famous white mass killers. The intended message is something like "Whites are evil" or "Mass killings are ...