If There’s a Difference in Means Among White v. Black – Byron York Thinks the White Mean is the Actual Number

Byron York offended a lot of us with the following:

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. Asked whether their opinion of the president is favorable or unfavorable, 49 percent of whites in the Times poll say they have a favorable opinion of Obama. Among blacks the number is 80 percent.

Goldberg himself was offended by the criticism noting:

It seems worthwhile to point that out that there are differences within the group -- something that is done all the time with political polls.

No Byron – we were not offended by your noting that there is a difference between the mean responses of blacks v. whites. Let me turn the microphone over to Brad DeLong for an explanation of what offended us:

For York, "actually" means "what white people think."

He later decides to qualify what he was trying to say with this “actually”. Maybe Mr. York should take remedial writing lessons before he is allowed to pen another op-ed.