HE'S ONLY BLACK ON JOB APPLICATIONS:

Have blacks been giving President Obama a pass on his shortcomings? That's the argument of Columbia University professor Fredrick C. Harris's new book, The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and the Rise and Decline of Black Politics. Harris takes an unvarnished, unflinching--and some would say unflattering--look at the current state of black politics in America through the lens of Obama's ascendancy to the White House.

The book is bound to be controversial, particularly in the black community, where any criticism of President Obama--especially from a black author--is deemed heresy at best and blasphemous at worst. But this tendency by blacks to go easy on the president over his shortcomings is essentially at the core of this book.

The "ticket" in the title of the book is what gained Obama admission to the White House; the "price" is what it cost blacks in terms of being able to move their political, economic, and criminal justice agendas forward. The core of Harris's argument is that, while Obama's win was (and still is) a source of great pride for blacks, it's much more symbolic than substantive; that he has done no more to address core concerns and issues facing black Americans than any other Democratic president before him, and, indeed, for a number of reasons falling under the umbrella of political expediency, has done far less.

Follow @brothersjudd