ort for Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic nomination as a Presidential candidate. Further, the paper provides an examination of news analyses and research pertinent to the idea that Hillary herself did a number of things to lower the support of African American females that she had at the outset of the race. The final section of the paper offers a series of conclusions formulated based on the analyses and research that is presented and discussed.
Before answering the question of whether African-American females 'should' have given more support to Hillary Clinton as a Democratic candidate, it must be noted that the term 'should' is associated logically with certain set criteria (MacKinnon, 2008). These criteria are obligation, propriety, and/or expediency. Specifically, it is considered proper to claim that a certain behavior should be engaged in if it can be shown that this behavior is an obligation or if there is a propriety or expediency associated with the behavior (see: Pojman, 2004).
In other words, the general question of whether African American females should have given Hillary more support can be broken down into a number of additional questions, which are:
(1) Did African Americans have some obligation to support Hillary and, if so, on what basis?;
(2) Did Hillary Clinton herself have some special characteristic (a proprietary characteristic) that entitled her to their support?; and
(3) Should African American females have offered her more support because doing so served a greater good or because it was more socially useful?
It is only by justifying an obligation, propriety, or expediency that the claim that African-American females 'should' have behaved in a certain way can truly be justified. Therefore, these questions are examined to see if the existing literature offers any sound justification for the claim that African-American females should have offered Hillary Clinton more s...