Idiom
For the horse racing term, see
Racecard
.
"
Playing the race card
" is an
idiomatic phrase
that refers to the exploitation by someone of either
racist
or
anti-racist
attitudes in the audience in order to gain an advantage.
[1]
[2]
[3]
It constitutes an accusation of
bad faith
directed at the person or persons raising concerns as regards racism.
[4]
Usage
[
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]
The phrase is generally used by people to allege that someone has deliberately and falsely accused another person or group of people of being a racist in order to gain some sort of advantage.
[4]
[5]
An example of this use of the term occurred during the
O. J. Simpson murder case
, when critics accused the defense of "playing the race card",
[6]
in presenting
Mark Fuhrman
's past as reasons to draw his credibility as a witness into question.
Stanford Law School
professor
Richard Thompson Ford
has argued that the race card can be played independently of the person making the claim, or the race in question. An example cited was the
Hillary Clinton
campaign's assertion that
Barack Obama
won the
2008 Democratic primary
in
South Carolina
owing to the disproportionate number of black registered Democrats in the state, implying more racism in the general population.
[7]
George Dei
,
et al.
, in the book
Playing the Race Card
,
[8]
argue that the term itself is a
rhetorical device
used in an effort to devalue and minimize claims of racism.
Other uses
[
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]
The phrase has been used to describe racist mobilisations by politicians, as for example with the campaign to elect
Peter Griffiths
, the
Conservative Party
candidate for
Smethwick
in the
1964 UK general election
. However, the term was only applied to describe this situation in the 1980s.
[9]
Malaysian politics
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]
In February 2008, Group Chief Editor Wong Chun Wai of
The Star
wrote, just before the
Malaysia general election
came, there is an unusual degree of tolerance and flexibility in matters of race, language and religion as politicians try to woo the people. "Also, there are those who still continue to play the race card, in this age and time. At their party conferences each year, they play to the gallery by projecting themselves as the communal heroes. But during the general election, they shamelessly become the true Malaysian leaders we dream of. They greet their voters in
Malay
,
English
,
Mandarin
and
Tamil
; and if they can speak all these languages fluently, they would do so."
[10]
In August 2006, the
Singapore Institute of International Affairs
wrote that Malaysia politician
Khairy Jamaluddin
"played the race card" by stirring up the
Malays
and the
Chinese Malaysian
community. Responding to criticisms and demands for an apology, Khairy said his remarks were misunderstood and he "will not apologize" as he was acting only "in defense of the Malays and his party" and that "if we truly fight for our race, one should not apologize".
[11]
See also
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References
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