One of my non-blogging buddies (one of the coolest mofos on the planet, actually) tipped me to this nice little article, by Byron York, entitled The black-white divide in Obama’s popularity. Imagine the look on my face when I read this, the very first paragraph (actually, don’t imagine that look; it’s not pretty):
On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. 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.
Um, yeah…WTF?
This dude actually wrote this. Here, let me translate this for you:
Black people don’t count (or if they do count, they sure as hell don’t count for more than 3/5′s of a white person) so, even if President Obama has a high approval rating, it’s not accurate (or actual) because black folks are all up in the mix. We all know that only white people’s opinions matter, right?
The entire article says nothing other than black people like Obama, and so he’s not really as popular as you think he is. It doesn’t matter that we happen to be members of the population and so our opinions count too. It doesn’t matter that black folks also overwhelmingly liked Bill Clinton. No one challenged Bill Clinton’s popularity because black folks loved him (ok, now that I think on this some more, I bet a good handful of folks did, but still). But when a lot of black folks happen to like another black dude, well then obviously something is amiss.
Post-Racial United States. Gotta love it.
Oh. My. God.
Kev, please stop doing this to me. It’s late, I’m tipsy; I’m not in the mood to cuss at people.
Sorry, Elle. I can’t help it though.
And really, these people need to be cussed at.
No – not cussed at – but cussed out!
If you turn it on its head, you find that the 21% of the population who are white supremacist have made some of President Obama’s positions appear less popular overall than they actually are.
Byron York. You can’t say his name without sneering. Srsly! Go ahead and try it.
Oh, TBW, you need to stop with all that logic and reason. You might hurt someone whose entire worldview is built around fallacies and lies. Hehe!
Gee, you’re right. I can’t say his name without sneering. Go figure.
OMG this is wicked and fabulous. I’d like to cross post on my blog with your permission. I’m gonna “stumble it” too
http://embraceyouragecauseyoulivin.blogspot.com
I LOVE IT. THE CRAZY THING IS, THEY HAVE NOTHING ELSE ON HIM SO THEY WHINE ABOUT THE LITTLE THINGS! *GO OBAMA*
i hate how it is always a black or white thing. this article made me mad we are not back in the 50s where blacks dont equal the whites. how do you figure that blacks only count for 3/5 of the whites or they dont equal at all. that makes no sence in the country we live in. everyone is equal and thats how it should be. everyones opinions matter and it doesnt matter about color of skin. you need to grow up and look around you and stop being racist
I wish I knew what the hell you are talking about, but I don’t. Seeing that I’m, y’know, black and all, I most certainly don’t believe that a black person only counts for 3/5s of a white person. You obviously didn’t read this post very closely.
It’s called snark (formerly known as sarcasm). Look it up.
But thanks for stopping by and calling me a racist for calling out racism. That one always cracks me up.
i think ambwe is just stupid, frankly. like you said, ambwe can’t read. but worse, i really don’t think ambwe even got what you were saying. e.g., that, somehow or other, the “real” population is white and black population is just some kind of special case you add in when it matters. or something. you can’t get the sarcasm of your post if you’re not hip to reading the article without the blinders of white supremacist thinking.
WTF! some people are so racist they don’t even know it. If McCain had won would he have said his ratings were do to the happy members of the KKK?
Actually your misinterpreting the original sentence. It has to do with the way the statistics are analyzed. It’s the same concept as grading a test on a curve. A large pool of outlying data (100% approval votes), skews the results for when the median should actually be around maybe 60-70, but due to the outliers raises to 80-90.
Nope, this isn’t a “Out of 10, how much do you approve of Obama?” It’s a question, maybe with 4 or choices, and that response is boiled down to simply if they approve or not. So there is no median for this statistic. However, I feel like what the writer is saying is that there are probably a lot of black people who approve of Obama to some degree because he is black. There also some whites who disapprove because he is black. However, if people go saying things like, “21% of the population who are white supremacist” (I know it’s a different poster), then don’t complain when you feel people are discounting blacks. To accuse more than a fourth of my race as white supremacist is absolutely outrageous when you are bemoaning the fact that someone is saying that blacks are more likely to approve of Obama because he also is black.
So, tell me why black folks are considered “outliers.” Why “should” the median be lower unless you are considering black folks a derivative from the norm? I’m reading that sentence exactly as you are and what I’m objecting too is the “outlier” status that people like this dude want to put black people in.
And I’m not arguing that there aren’t black folks out there that like him simply because he’s black. Of course there are. But my question remains; why aren’t the tables ever turned? Why weren’t people writing about how white folks inflated Reagan’s popularity back in the day?
I guess my little red-headed, so white I glow in the dark self must be some kind of racial “colluder” against my own kind, siding with the POC this way. Shame on me!
Seriously, that is really screwed up thinking. This is America, who cares what the races of Obama’s supporters are. I know for a fact that some of them are white, since I am one, but if minority race people make up a larger percentage of the supporters, great! That means that something must be going right for a change, since most of the time it seems like minorities don’t feel included in political issues.
Go Obama!
It hurts me to see all you ignorant hippies trying to get the meaning of the man’s article while passing blunts. He clearly is pointing to the fact that no black person would ever badmouth Obama, which is why he speculates the stats are off. Wake up- is our country this full of idiots?
…”the stats are off”
Lol. You don’t even get it. I think you answered your own question before asked it.
Did you just say no black person would ever criticize Obama? Dude, you need to open your own damn eyes, take a look out there in the real world, and stop listening to Limbaugh and watching Beck. That shit is worse for you than weed could ever be.
And yeah, what Ashton said.
Yeah really. A friend of mine told me about this article at lunch yesterday and she also noted how certain opinions only appear to count 3/5 as much — or less. Sometiems all you can say is WTF.
jon
Kevin you have a point, but I’m afraid I’m inclined to agree with Binary Stats Man here. I felt that the point of Byron York’s article (Damn, I really couldn’t say it without sneering) was not to argue that black people’s opinions are worth less. Rather, I think he was simply pointing out that a lot of black people may be approving of Obama because he too, is black.
It’s a psychological fact that we humans find people who are similar to us in appearance to be more agreeable. Given that Americans (of all races and backgrounds) are notoriously ignorant when it comes to politics (have you ever watched Jay Leno ask random strangers in New York such questions as, “Who is the current Secretary of State?”), I don’t think it is too much of a logical leap to conclude that Obama’s high approval ratings may be artificially inflated by black people who approve of Obama simply because he is black, and not because of his policies and recent actions. This would also be true of Latinos if we had a Latino president, or of Brits if we had a British president. I don’t believe Byron York intended to be racist.
That is precisely how he did frame it. That the only reason his policies seem as popular as they are is that segment of the population who will approve of him for no reason other than that he is black.
It assumes a degree of bias that is always applied to minority groups and women and never to the white male. Byron York has had many years opportunity to frame the popularity of white male president’s policies as being inflated based on the racial bias of white males.
It is a popular framing technique among dishonest journamalists.
Certainly white males would find a white, male president more agreeable. However, there is a key difference in this case — every single president so far has been a white male. Indeed until recently, nearly every politician in government has been a white male. So arguing that white males agreed with past presidents simply because they look similar would imply that white males would have agreed with nearly ALL politicians, a notion that is just silly.
If President Obama’s ratings are in fact being artificially inflated because he is black, I think all that shows is that Americans are still in shock, particularly African Americans, who I can imagine are elated that a black man was actually elected president.
It will take months and perhaps years before the dust settles and we start to see the true effects of Obama’s controversial plans. In the mean time, Obama’s ratings are probably somewhat arbitrary and meaningless.
Agreeable is not the issue.
Approving of policies based not on those policies, but on the bases of being of the same race.
You can dance all around it, but it is what it is.
I wish I could like Obama, but he’s actually following the same unhealthy agendas of the Bush Administration and being dishonest about it.
This 20 min video clip examines what is really happening behind the scenes. Prof Griff of Public Enemy and others give commentary..
http://newsofinterest.tv/video_pages_flash/obama_deception_clip_02.php
Oh.
[...] From: A Slant Truth [...]
Okay I’m late to this one but n notice how they weren’t overly interested in how many white people loved all of the previous white presidents. There are days I cannot read the news for fear of my head exploding.