read this...
"But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are."
now read it again...
"But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are."
Its from an article in the Washington Examiner, The black-white divide in Obama's popularity by Byron York which talks about Obama's popularity using a recent NYT's poll and how these numbers divide along race.
Brad Delong comments:
For York, "actually" means "what white people think."
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
For crying out loud, what the hell does that mean, exactly? I read the rest of the piece, hoping to see York explain why the president's seemingly popular positions are exaggerated or inflated. Why, in other words, these positions "appear" more popular "than they actually are."
But all the piece tells me is that African Americans tend to support Obama in greater numbers than white Americans.
The problem, of course, is that damn phrase "than they actually are." York argues that we can see polls gauging public opinion, but if we want to really understand the popularity of the president's positions, and not be fooled by "appearances," then we have to exclude black people.
There's really no other credible way to read this. York effectively argues that black people shouldn't count. We can look at polls measuring the attitudes of Americans, but if we want to see the truth -- appreciate the numbers as "they actually are" -- then it's best if we focus our attention on white people, and only white people.
Adam Serwer added, "This is another example of a really bizarre genre of conservative writing, which I call 'If Only Those People Weren't Here.'"
This is unacceptable.
Yglesias shrewdly points out that
Byron York has identified an important problem in our system of measuring public opinion, just the sort of thing that inspired the noble Framers of our constitution to wisely implement the three fifths compromise:
I don't think the guy is racist (how would I know?) in fact looking at a lot of studies on race I can make the case (and do so quite often) that we are all racist at the subconscious first impulse-level--at least thats what the empirical studies I've seen tend to show; so maybe he just didn't reread his work, which I'm famous for (sadly) myself. So I'm not trying to play pin the tail on the racist here. But a writers words can say something more than just about the writer themselves. I do think it speaks to something about our culture at a deeper level and maybe thats just me... and maybe its just living in the south, therefore I think there is something to Delong's point putting all ad hom's aside for the moment.
I'm going at this along the lines of how intriguing it is to me that discussions on a local right wing email newsletter that I read spent a far more substantial amount of time talking about race and racism than any of my discussions and activities within the Obama effort or interactions within the african american community this past year and a half. By a long shot.
In his retort at being called a racist York says,
Maybe "across-the-board" would have been better than "overall," but I doubt that would have kept a left-wing activist like Matthew Yglesias, or Andrew Sullivan, who has himself been accused of racism and, quite recently, anti-Semitism, from branding me a racist.
First, he said, "if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate..." which one one assume means--properly weighted, without leading questions--then there is no need for demographic slicing and dicing that York does in his response. He's back tracking. And more importantly, is Andrew Sullivan really a left-wing activist? Did I miss something?
***[Also let it be known to the world that one day I may (already have?) write something that is just plain wrong and/or doesn't read the way it was intended. May the writing gods please not strike me down for posting on this quote....]
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