Black Women and Hillary Clinton

At the beginning of 2008, Elshinnawi (2008) discussed the fact that it would be quite possible for American voters to turn this year's Presidential election into historic proportions by voting for either an African-American president or a female President. As Elshinnawi (2008: 1) put it:

Political scientists believe a real change is occurring in voters' attitudes toward historic racial and gender barriers in American politics, and the 2008 competition is shaping up to be a presidential campaign like none before it.

As of early June, however, the primaries were over in every state and the Democratic nominee was Barack Obama, thereby ending the chance that there would be a female President elected in 2008. While some consideration is being given to Hillary Clinton as Vice President, the sources cited by most journalists state that she will not be asked to fill this position (Davis, 2008; Drum, 2008; Page, 2008).

What is surprising to some is that while Hillary had generally strong support from women voters, she did not have a great deal of support from black female voters (Raasch, 2008). This fact brings up two questions:

1. Why didn't black women support Hillary Clinton in larger numbers?; and

2. Should black women have done more to support a woman as the first female President of the United States?

The purpose of this paper is to answer the second question. It is the thesis of this paper that there is not a strong f

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the other considerations were satisfied but clearly it is not a criterion that should outweigh all else. However, it has been argued that the oppression of women in the area of voting and political positions (see: Dolan, 2003; Giddens, Duneier, & Appelbaum, 2007) may make it a consideration that should be given very high priority because this is the first female in American history who has ever run for President. By supporting and voting for Hillary Clinton, African American female voters would be serving a higher social good of overcoming the oppression of sexism. Indeed, even if Hillary had not won, it could be argued, on this basis, that heavily supporting her would still serve that same social good of fighting against sexism. In fact, the notion that women should support and vote for women running for any political office has been made in numerous sociopolitical publications (Hoff-Sommers, 1995; Ziarek, 2001; James, 2007). Citing gender as a proprietary characteristic is another argument that can be made. This argument would state that supporting Hillary is required of females because she is a female and that in and of itself makes her a more attractive and special candidate for women. However, the argument must fail

Category: People - B