A Slice of Life.

The nice thing about blogging - at least for me - is the immediacy and transparency that the journal like process of blogging provides to readers, offering a view into experiences and perspectives previously unknown. A case in point is this post by Mullatoboy following this post by Cobb on the subject of what it's like to be presumed to be a sharer of the values of another merely because of one's race. Cobb's point - that underclass values are presumed to be real and authentic compared to cultured values - and seems to be something similar to the point that John McWhorter is making in Doing Our Own Thing.

As for me, I've got no similar experience to draw upon. No redhead has ever presumed that I would "hook him up" because of our shared colormorph. Albeit I do know what it's like to date a redhead - weirdly similarly to incest, and I don't mean that in a good way.

While I've got zero real experience to add to the conversation - and I really do recommend both posts - ignorance has never stopped me from sharing my purely theoretical insights. Those insights boil down to the words "affinity fraud."

If you ever go to an on-line legal research system and type in words relating to fraud, you will see an interesting pattern. The cases are often named things like Kirkerian v. Kazillian or Yang v. Chee or O'Reilly v. Murphy (particularly the cases before 1970.) This pattern is replicated in the practical experience of the business litigation attorney who finds the most egregious instances of fraud to happen within churches. These fact patterns make out "affinity fraud" where people within an ethnic groups and ethnic churches will prey upon members of their own group because it's easy, because the victims have the guards down, because the victims are trusting. Racial solidarity talk is simply affinity fraud institutionalized. (By the way, as should be obvious from context, I'm making no assertion that someone named, for example, O'Reilly sued someone named Murphy, nor am I referring to any specific person. I've pulled these case names either out of the air or my vast practical experience. If you think that I'm referring to a specific actual published decision, a real case or a specific person, you have absolutely no basis for making that claim.)

My take-away from my observations of affinity fraud is not dissimilar to that of Cobb and Mullatoboy. I've resolved never to do business with Irish Catholics, and certainly not with redheaded Irish Catholics.

You just can't trust those cheating SOBs.