Origins
The term originated in the 1992 presidential candidacy of Bill Clinton. In a Washington Post interview published on May 13, 1992, the hip-hop MC, author, and political activist Sister Souljah was quoted as saying, "If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" The remark was part of a longer response to the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The quotation resulted in criticism.
In June 1992, Clinton responded both to that quotation and to something Souljah had said in the music video of her song “The Final Solution: Slavery’s back in Effect” ("If there are any good white people, I haven't met them") while giving a speech to Jesse Jackson Sr.'s Rainbow Coalition, saying, “If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black,’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.”
Prior to his appearance, Clinton's campaign staff had conducted an intense debate about how far he should go in distancing himself from Jackson, who was unpopular with moderate voters. When Souljah was invited to speak at the conference, Clinton's advisors saw their chance. However, despite the meme-like nature of the term in the mainstream media, there is little evidence that the act by Clinton had any effect on voters' mindsets.
Clinton's response was harshly criticized by Jackson, who said, “Sister Souljah represents the feelings and hopes of a whole generation of people,” and he claimed that she had been misquoted. Clinton was also criticized by some of the Democratic Party's other African American supporters. Clinton was accused by Sister Souljah of being a racist and a hypocrite because he had played golf at a country club that refused to admit black members.
Read more about this topic: Sister Souljah Moment
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)