Dinkins Offers to Mediate a Clinton-Jackson Truce

HOUSTON — New York Mayor David N. Dinkins said Saturday that Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton made a mistake in using the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition as a forum to take issue with rap singer Sister Souljah.

Dinkins, in Houston for a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said he would be willing to mediate a reconciliation between Clinton and Jackson. Dinkins did not take issue with the substance of Clinton’s remarks, but said he believed that the time and place were wrong.

Clinton’s criticism of the rap singer continued to create political waves a week later. Jackson has said the remarks indicate a “character flaw” in Clinton. Clinton, who has clinched the Democratic nomination, has refused to back off the comments.

At issue were the singer’s published comments that, “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people.”

Dinkins said Clinton interpreted those remarks as a call for the murder of white people. The mayor suggested that he did not share that interpretation. “I’m saying that nobody condones a call for murder. I dare say even Sister Souljah did not mean that,” Dinkins said.

Dinkins said the problem was that the Rainbow Coalition audience “was primed to receive him (Clinton) favorably. I think it might have been handled differently.”