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 foundation for the idea that African-American females "should" have behaved other than they did which is to say that there is little justification for the claim that African American women should have given more support to Hillary Clinton.
The thesis will be discussed and supported based on examining those criteria which would allow justification for making the claim that African-American females 'should' have behaved other than how they behaved in terms of providing supp...