Ethos Fallacy - Guilt by Association

The fallacy that I chose comes from one of ethos fallacies. Guilt by association is an attack on an individual’s credibility based upon that individual’s association with a particular group. The most common well known example of this fallacy is racism. Yes think about it. Racism results in someone doing something that was maybe an offense to someone else. Because of that the identified race is held accountable or is perceived to do the same. I think that this fallacy can be easily identified if the author can’t provide sufficient evidence. If the accusation is because of past incidents with the same racial group than this is a guilt by association fallacy.

 A time that I was encountered by this fallacy is one my mission in England. In England there is a stereotype associated with people from Romania. These specific people are referred to as Gypsies. Known by the people of England to steal anything that they can get their hands on. That’s right you name it, from your personal t.v to wallet from your pants while they are starring at you in the eyes and talking to you. Every time we ate over members house and they asked who were in our teaching pool. As we would tell them that we were teaching all kinds of people: Chinese, English, Polish and Portuguese. Their response would be “Good, as long as you’re not teaching any Gypsies.” One day we got a referral from a member and we meet up with the referral at his work. As we approach his place of work, a car wash we realize that he was a Gypsie. Along with him was his brother, uncle and friend. We had two options, we could either not teach them or we could give it a shot. We decided to teach them after all. As we returned for the second appointment the new Gypsie investigators had referred 10 new people to us. They all wanted to hear about the gospel. They came to activities and church and absolutely loved it. The members were totally surprised that they didn't meet the stereotype that they all had associated with Gypsies. If my and companion and I had decided to go along with what we heard about the Romanian group then we would have never gotten 14 new investigators in one week.

 I think that the ethos fallacy, guilt by association is easy to recognize because of the association that one is acclaimed to because of her or her ethnic or racial group. Throughout my life I have known about this fallacy without actually knowing that it’s been occurring throughout years of history.