In his new book, The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and the Rise and Decline of Black Politics, Fredrick Harris claims that, in order to win election to the White House, Obama had to make a concession that all people of color knew he would have to make: he would have to prove to a critical mass of white America that he would not be a "black president", and would instead be a "president who happens to be black." According to Harris, this strategy (one employed by a generation of black politicians in the post-civil rights period) has done more harm than good. As Mansfield Frazier over at The Daily Beast says in his review of the book, "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."
Here's Harris on C-Span's "After Words" discussing his book.
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