Race Card - Usage

Usage

In the less critical sense, the phrase is commonly used in two contexts. In the first, and more common context, it alleges that someone has deliberately and falsely accused another person of being a racist in order to gain some sort of advantage. An example of this use of the term occurred during the O. J. Simpson murder trial, when critics accused the defense of "playing the race card" in presenting Mark Fuhrman's racist past (e.g., his recorded use of the word "nigger" in addition to his being accused of tampering with murder evidence in prior cases, as well as his use of the Fifth Amendment to avoid potential self-incrimination upon questioning) as a reason to draw his credibility as a witness into question.

In the second context, it refers to someone exploiting prejudice against another race for political or some other advantage. The use of the southern strategy by a political candidate is said by some to be a version of playing the race card, such as when former Senator Jesse Helms, during his 1990 North Carolina Senate campaign, ran an ad showing a black man taking a white man's job, intended as a criticism of the idea of racial quotas. The ad was interpreted by many people as trying to play to racist fears among white voters.

Stanford professor Richard Thompson Ford has argued that the race card can be played independent of the person making the claim, or the race in question. An example cited was the Hillary Clinton campaign claiming that Obama won the 2008 Democratic Primary in South Carolina due to the disproportionate number of black registered Democrats in the state, implying more racism in the general population.

George Dei, Karumanchery, et alia, in their book Playing the Race Card argue that the term itself is a rhetorical device used in an effort to devalue and minimize claims of racism.