Friend argument

An experienced bigot! Oh, boy!

Cogito ergo sum Logic and rhetoric

Key articles

Logical fallacy Syllogism Argument

General logic

Argumentum ad dictionarium Masked man fallacy Loaded question Word magic Regression fallacy Due diligence

Bad logic

Due diligence Not as bad as Argument by assertion Terrorism-baiting Neyman's bias False dilemma v - t - e

“”I'm not a murderer; some of my best friends are alive.

—Sean Lock

The friend argument is an argument used by people who want to claim knowledge about and/or sympathy with a group, by referring to their "friends" belonging to this group. It is commonly used in a feeble attempt to clear and absolve oneself from suspicion of racism, xenophobia, or other kinds of bigotry. It is a particular form of the "Not prejudiced, but…" statement.

Conversely, if the above argument — that "if you're close to somebody, you can't wish to do them harm" — were true, one would expect to see far fewer (read: zero) domestic abuse cases.

Form

P1: Y, a friend of X, is a distrusted minority.

P2: (unstated): If one is a bigot, one cannot have a friend of a distrusted minority.

C: Therefore, X is not a bigot.

Examples

See also: I'm not racist, but...

• "I don't hate blacks. I have many black friends. But…"
• "I am not homophobic. I have a gay friend, and he is OK. But…"
• "Some of my friends are atheists. But…"
• "Dr. Bloch is an Edeljude. If all Jews were like him, there would be no Jewish question." (This is paraphrasing a real Hitler quote.)

The friend argument is one of the laziest ways to try to worm out of accepting the responsibility for endorsing prejudice. The idea is that someone cannot be prejudiced if they have friends of that demographic; if they had a real prejudice against that full group, then none of them would be okay to hang around, and conversely, then that member of said group would no longer be their friend.

In a rather absurd example, someone can cite a specific example that excuses their general behaviour, for example "how can I be a misogynist, I love my mother." — or, in an even more absurd example "I'm not sexist — after all, all of my girlfriends have been female." While this line of reasoning might be true for someone who genuinely doesn't have a general prejudice, it isn't a good argument to prove it — and it certainly doesn't absolve someone who actually does hold such a belief. Such argumentation can be used as 'evidence' that someone is not prejudiced, but this alone does not amount to 'proof'. The underlying fallacy is that one single point of data, this one "friend", completely overrides any other bits of evidence we have to assess someone's views. This is simply not valid reasoning. The presence (or not) of a prejudice is determined by what follows the "But…" in those above examples, not what comes before.

Often, the excuse is accompanied by the fact that this hypothetical friend is "not typical" of the group being discriminated against. This would be like saying "I have a Muslim friend, he's not a typical Muslim because he doesn't fly planes into buildings," or "My friend is an atheist and he doesn't preach about it like Dawkins." This usually reveals more about where someone's prejudices towards a group stem from; anecdotal evidence, selective reporting of the "bad" ones, or existing stereotypes. The fact is, a person attempting this argument is guilty of forming a prejudice against an entire group by only looking at a few examples that confirm their views. The assertion that their friend is "not typical" could also be a way to cope with the cognitive dissonance of having negative prejudices against a certain group but at the same time enjoying a friendship with a member of such group.

Having a friend who belongs to a demographic that one hates isn't incompatible with a prejudice against that demographic — and this is the key to the fallacy. A prejudice is, by its etymology, a "pre-judgement" of someone, based on more general information that may not necessarily apply to an individual. This can be a relatively benign conclusion ("he's a gay man, he must like fashion") or it can be the considerably more negative ("he's a black man, he's going to stab me"). However, once one has actually gotten beyond the stage of judging someone on prior knowledge, one can change one's mind about that individual. In many cases, this might overturn the prejudice entirely, but in the case of people using the friend argument, it has only overturned the prejudice against one individual, or maybe a few more. The prejudice, the pre-judgement against a group of people, still stands. This is why saying you have a friend in one particular demographic doesn't excuse racism, homophobia, or other prejudice; you can't have a pre-judgement about someone you already know, but you can still maintain your pre-judgement against people you haven't met.

The "friend" may really be a loose acquaintance, a pundit (especially one who sucks up to bigots), or even entirely imaginary and only act as a mouthpiece for the speaker's bigoted opinions about the "typical" member of the group in question, allowing them to justify their bigotry by pointing to the "friend"'s supposed authority, in this way combining the "one of the good ones" trope with a further fallacy. For example:

• Blaire White is every transphobe's favourite trans woman because she allows the transphobe to claim that most trans women are completely insane and then use the defense, "She's herself a trans woman so she must know!"
• Homophobes love Milo Yiannopoulos for his "politically incorrect" opinions about his fellow gay men. The bigot employs an advanced version of the friend argument here, which may be called the "Boomerang Bigot fallacy": "This person is themself a member of the group in question, so they can't be bigoted against the group!"

The Confederacy's black friends

A common claim found in Lost Cause tracts is that there were thousands of black soldiers fighting on the side of the Confederacy. The number is, of course, severely inflated. While cases of black Confederate soldiers can be found, the idea of entire black regiments is a myth and a number of Southern generals explicitly rejected this idea. In a number of these cases as well, black slaves and servants are re-spun as soldiers. Fewer than four hundred black soldiers were called up, near the end of the war as a desperation tactic. Most of them never saw combat, and a majority deserted for the Union lines. It could be said that these mythical soldiers were the Confederacy's "black friends".

Hitler's Noble Jew

“”I'm not anti-semitic. One of my best friends is The Jew.

—James Fritz

Perhaps one of the most clear examples that can illustrate this fallacy is Eduard Bloch. During his youth, Adolf Hitler was treated by Jewish doctor Eduard Bloch. He later treated Adolf's mother Klara Hitler for breast cancer; because of the poor economic situation of the Hitler family, Dr. Bloch charged reduced fees, sometimes taking no fee at all for his work. Despite the fact that Klara died, the young Hitler was very kind to him, even going as far as to declare his "eternal gratitude" for his actions. Indeed, in the following years, Hitler sent the doctor a postcard assuring him of such gratitude and reverence, even sending him handmade gifts like a large wall painting. Years later as a dictator, Hitler frequently inquired about Bloch's well-being. Though Bloch initially was disturbed after Germany annexed Austria and his medical practice was forced to close, after sending Hitler a letter asking for help, he was placed under special protection by the Gestapo, allowed to resume his medical practice, retain his passport, and remain completely undisturbed before he migrated to the United States. In fact, Hitler went as far as to claim that if all Jews were like Dr. Bloch, discrimination against Jews would be entirely unnecessary. Yet despite this, it didn't prevent the well-known discrimination and eventually genocide by Nazi Germany toward the overwhelming majority of Jews in continental Europe, which is exactly the problem with this.

See also

• Friend arguments are equally receptive to the fallacy of guilt by association. See Grover Norquist and his attempts to court gay and non-white conversatives.
• I'm not prejudiced, but...
• One of the good ones
• Tokenism

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Si vous voulez cet article en français, il peut être trouvé à Argument de l'ami.

External links

• Corresponding article on TV Tropes
• A brief history of the "some of my best friends" defense, The New Republic
• "I Have Gay Friends", Blag Hag
• Rowan Atkinson sketch involving this argument