ELECTIONS ’92 : Clinton Is Seen Challenging White Politicians’ Approach to Race Issues

How sharply can any white politician criticize behavior in the black community without being accused of racial posturing for votes?

That explosive question is swirling just below the layers of personal acrimony and political calculation that mark Bill Clinton’s dispute with Jesse Jackson over rap singer Sister Souljah.

At a surface level, the dispute is following the familiar minuet of intricately choreographed friction between Jackson and the Democratic presidential nominees in each of the last two campaigns in the weeks preceding the party’s national convention.

But to many observers, the controversy raises much deeper and incendiary issues--matters so raw they are rarely discussed in American politics. At the heart is the legitimacy of white politicians to raise questions about problems within the black community.

Like his call for requiring all welfare recipients to work, Clinton’s condemnation of Souljah represents an overt attempt to break from the traditional liberal approach to racial issues. That approach typically has focused almost exclusively on white racism and the obligations of the broader society to minorities.

By accusing the rapper of racism, Clinton is “challenging the assumption by white liberals that they don’t have the moral standing to hold blacks to commonly held standards--or risk being called racists if they do,” says Will Marshall, head of the Progressive Policy Institute and a Clinton adviser.

But what Clinton partisans see as candor, some blacks see as code words aimed at inflaming white suspicions. Clinton’s remarks “continue what we have had in the White House for the past 12 years--which is people essentially pandering to fear,” says Howard University political scientist Ron Walters, a Jackson adviser.

The dispute began on June 13 when Clinton spoke to a meeting of Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition in Washington and criticized Souljah--who had appeared at the group’s gathering the day before--for several published statements, including one in the Washington Post in which, discussing the Los Angeles riots, she said: “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people.”

The singer has since said she rejects violence and maintained her remarks in the Post were taken out of context--although the newspaper later printed extensive excerpts that seem to belie that claim. She has accused Clinton of attempting to manipulate racial animosity.

Jackson also has repeatedly chided the Arkansas governor, questioning why he chose the Rainbow Coalition forum to air his comments and complaining that Clinton should have advised him of his intentions.

Initially, Jackson broadly hinted that he might embrace the likely independent candidacy of Ross Perot. But now, said one source who knows both Jackson and Clinton, they may be looking for ways to tamp down the dispute.

Three separate forces appear to be driving the conflict.

The most immediate are tactical calculations by the Clinton camp. Many observers, both black and white, believe he staged the confrontation to signal his intent not to follow the path of former Democratic presidential nominees Walter F. Mondale and Michael S. Dukakis--each of whom reluctantly staged elaborate public negotiations with Jackson about the role he would play in their campaigns.

Adding to the conflict is a second force: A history of ill will between the two men.

But beyond these personal and political considerations, the dispute springs from deeper divisions about strategy and policy direction within the Democratic Party.

Since the 1988 campaign, Democrats have engaged in an increasingly candid debate about the role of race in the sundering of their national presidential coalition. For instance, Sens. Bill Bradley of New Jersey and John Kerry of Massachusetts recently called for a more frank discussion of such racially polarizing issues as crime and affirmative action.

This growing chorus has disturbed many black leaders, who see in it signs of backsliding from the concerns of African-Americans at a time of great social duress.

From the start of his campaign, Clinton has tried to find a synthesis that reaches out to disaffected whites without alienating blacks.

As forcefully as any Democratic candidate in recent memory, he has condemned white racism and called for racial reconciliation. But he has insisted that discrimination alone cannot explain all the problems facing blacks, and he has repeatedly called for all Americans--including minorities--to assume greater personal responsibility for their lives.

Sympathetic observers of both races see Clinton’s criticism of Souljah as an attempt to reinforce another point he has made throughout the campaign: that public policy should reward those who “play by the rules” and chastise those who don’t, regardless of race or class.

“He is not courting (white Southerners) by doing what he did--he is reflecting the sea change that is going on even among liberals, a realization that there cannot be double standards,” said Jim Sleeper, the author of “The Closest of Strangers,” a recent book on race relations.

Several black elected officials--particularly Rep. Mike Espy of Mississippi--backed Clinton during the current furor.

But other blacks question Clinton’s credibility to accuse anyone of racial insensitivity in the wake of the flap created when he played a round of golf at a segregated golf club earlier this year. And many clearly have grown exasperated by lectures on personal responsibility from white politicians at a time when Vice President Dan Quayle has blamed the Los Angeles riots on a “poverty of values.”

“It’s become very acceptable to shift the discussion to values, as if there is something wrong with African-Americans and we lack values,” said Los Angeles attorney Cynthia McClain-Hill, the publisher of a statewide political newsletter aimed at black professionals. “It’s an absolute total insult to African-Americans.”

Some Clinton supporters, meanwhile, fear he diluted his message by not broadening his criticism of Souljah into a broader call for racial reconstruction around common standards.

“There is a legitimate debate which I think Clinton has been very powerful and courageous in trying to deal with,” says Democratic strategist Bill Carrick. “But that’s all diminished to the extent we get into a debate about protocol, about rap singers and about the proper role of Jesse Jackson in the Democratic Party leadership.”