Time Machine: 1992

I just found this blast from the past over at BlackPerspective.net I had all but forgotten about the Sister Souljah incident.

Oh How We Forget, The Clintons Race Baited In ‘92
THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Democrats; Jackson Sees a ‘Character Flaw’ In Clinton’s Remarks on Racism
By R. W. APPLE JR.,
Published: June 19, 1992
Escalating his conflict with Gov. Bill Clinton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson charged today that in a clumsy bid for the backing of alienated white voters the presumptive Democratic nominee had “again exposed a character flaw.”

In a bitter rejoinder to Mr. Clinton, Mr. Jackson said in an interview that the Arkansas Governor had come to the Rainbow Coalition conference in Washington last weekend to “stage a very well-planned sneak attack, without the courage to confront but with a calculation to embarrass” him.

At the conference of Mr. Jackson’s coalition, the Governor denounced the rap singer Sister Souljah for having used racially inflammatory language in a newspaper interview, and he criticized Mr. Jackson for asking her to take part in the meeting.

By his choice of language today, Mr. Jackson, an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988, rubbed an old sore and raised the specter of continuing conflict within the Democratic Party. Mr. Clinton has struggled for months to put the “character issue” behind him and in recent weeks has seemed to succeed. ‘Isolating Jackson’

Mr. Clinton’s “Machiavellian maneuver,” Mr. Jackson declared, was intended “purely to appeal to conservative whites by containing Jackson and isolating Jackson.”