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Cards, discrimination, Equity, Ethnicity, Race, Race card, Racism, Social Justice, Social Justice Warriors
What is the race card?
Or is that obvious?
Okay, I don’t guess there is much mystery as to the meaning of the phrase ‘race card’. It’s consistently employed as an accusation that someone has used the prospect of racism cynically to their own advantage. Maybe they have accused someone of discrimination who didn’t deserve it, or maybe they are just complaining about some general sense of inequity when (so the thinking goes) they ought to stop playing the victim and do what it takes to succeed in life. Either way, to say that someone has played the ‘race card’ means that they’ve raised the prospective of racial disparity on spurious grounds. It’s as if someone has raised the issue simply because they can.
…a bit like playing a card simply because it’s in your hand.
Okay, so I can certainly think of some times when I believe people have raised the accusation of racial injustice without just cause. I can think of instances in which people I’ve known in real life (or famous people I’ve known about from various media) seem to field the accusation without substantial cause. Of course, it is entirely possible that I may have missed a few things. Being a white guy, raised in lily-white neighborhoods, I lack the immediate personal experience to see a lot of this without reflection (or a patient person willing to explain it to me). Still I can’t help thinking, at least some of the accusations of racism leveled at various parties are indeed unwarranted, More than that, I suspect at least some of them have been made in bad faith, not merely as an error, but a lie.
I reckon this phrase ‘race card’ is as good a way to call attention to that sort of problem as any, at least any that willy fit into a 140 character tweet, (or at least 140 character mind).
Okay…
But if there is a race card, so to speak, then there is also a race card
…card.
Hell, the race card card works as easily as the race card. The mere existence of a body of concerns about race is enough to empower the race card. Recourse to the accusation of racism is enough to give that card all sorts of power. It’s enough to help shameless people exploit the topic. The race card card is no less convenient or easy to use. So long as people have concerns about the credibility of other people’s concerns about racism, cynical abuse of those meta-concerns will always carry a degree of weight And of course the existence of a short-hand phrase to communicate the message makes it all that much easier.
Indeed, a quick trip around the net reveals a number of people who believe (or at least maintain) that the subject of racism can be reduced entirely to cynical use of the race card. The mere mention of the word ‘race card’ seems, to some anyway, sufficient to answer a history of slavery, Indian removal, Chinese exclusion, manifest destiny, segregation, and countless comparable institutions and practices. Whether we are to believe, these things were never really about racism to begin with, or that all this history has been neatly contained somewhere in the past varies from source to source, but the theme is ubiquitous. Countless cultural conservatives would love us to believe that the subject of racism is (now at any rate) simply a liberal contrivance.
If I can agree that people sometimes use the prospect of racial discrimination to gain unwarranted advantages, then I must also insist that people sometimes use the prospect of such a ploy to dismiss legitimate concerns about racial disparities out of hand. You can use the race card to make people think you have been treated unfairly on account of your race, even if you haven’t. But you can also use the prospect of a ‘race card’ to to dismiss perfectly serious concerns about real social inequities. Both ploys seem to work. They seem to work best for different audiences, to be sure, but under the right circumstances, each can be a very effective means of getting undue leverage over others.
So, what sort of card game is this anyway? It ain’t poker! Honestly, I don’t think it’s any game you would play with a conventional deck of cards. I can’t help thinking this is a collectable card game of sorts. I can just imagine the race card saying something like: “+1 versus liberal sympathies. Triggers outrage checks versus conservatives.” As to the race card card, it probably just says it will counter the race card, “but only when used in combination with white privilege.”
The white privilege card doesn’t say anything.
It doesn’t have to.
It goes without saying that similar cards and counter cards exist for gender, religion, sexual preference, and …well, for gender again, and again. Similar cards should probably exist for class and geographical region, but we rarely see them. The ‘Class warfare’ card is a definite exception. It’s perfectly suited to eliminate any defense against assaults by the upper classes. Just put the class warfare card on the table, and you can screw the middle and working classes without any scrutiny, or even to torment the unemployed with a free conscience.
I don’t reckon there is much hope of getting rid of spurious political card games. None of these gambits are going away any time soon. In any event, people talk about the ‘race card’ a lot. By ‘people’ I of course mean ‘social conservatives’. People don’t talk much about the race card card.
I think they should.
northierthanthou 
My ancestors were brought to the place where i live, as slaves on an english prison hulk. My grandmother used to tell stories about being publicly thrashed and humiliated for speaking Gaelic in english school. The empire destroyed our culture and eradicated our language and broke up our families. But as far as modern racists are concerned, all they see is the white skin and red hair. They assume that i’m english! Racism can go suck a d**k.
Ditto. Poor German farmers who came over after the civil war, Irish immigrants, and some Native American.. My family owned no slaves.
But nope. If you’re white, your family owned slaves. Period. No discussion.
*Sigh*
A well-written post. I like it. The race-card card needs more spotlights pointing at it.
Yeah, that race card saying drives me nuts. It’s not a “card,” it’s our country’s history.
Per the first commenter, two things:
1. This isn’t a zero-sum game, setting aside your attempts to make it so.
2. The Irish-Americans, as a white ethnic group, have in my opinion played the race card card more than anybody else. Your piece kind of reeks of it.
3. Semi-ditto for the German, who actually had many ancestors here, including the first Speaker of the House, before the Revolution. Go ahead and poor-man your own heritage in the name of a straw man, though.
4. It’s this type of fake martyrdom, and here I go, that … Makes America Godddamned Asshole-like. You do the acronym “math.”
True. The Irish, having been shat upon by the English (oh, were they shat on). and considered the lowest of the low, were quite eager to shit on black America and thereby establish their own equality with other whites.
Indeed. Nell Irwin Painter discusses that well in “A History of White People.” https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2032614306
The only one who loses anything by a claim of racism, where it actually doesn’t exist, is the one making that claim. Point being, oppression and racism are real, and prevalent, and toxic. Until us white folks have checked our own white privilege and worked for change and practiced seeing racism instead of denying it, we don’t have the luxury of deciding what is racism and what isn’t.
If one needs to wonder if are race cards in play today, we would have to recognize that of course there mostly certainly are and no one plays them to the hilt more than the Cdn & U.S. gov’ts who still have in full operation huge federal depts dedicated to the business of managing the lives of the Indigenous and their resources to the tune of trillions of dollars, not to mention the now private U.S. prison systems that still provide a disgustingly high amount of free labour for the state and corps. They aren’t going to let go of those hugely enriching programs any day soon.
There is also a point to the colonized areas that many people seem to be completely oblivious to unless you’re born to an Indigenous nation, particularly in North America. If one is a part of the overall population receiving the benefit of decent cross country highways, healthcare (Cda – insured&services), clean water, decent free education, etc. etc. etc. then one is receiving – still – the benefits of colonialist indecencies. It was those indecencies built in greed that continue – to this day – to take the lion’s share of benefits and resources from the land that belongs to the Indigenous. There are treaties in many areas of Canada/U.S. that are still legal documents that are enforceable even on U.S./Canada legal grounds and within International legal understanding.
To this date, the treaties that were made in perpetuity and meant to equally “share” the land and benefits have been railroaded by one party of the agreements only. It is the descendants of those original signors that continue this tradition of self-serving deceit. There are many who are aware of the history and its facts of truth, but turn their faces the other way because – ‘will living up to those agreements mean I have to live with less’?
So, to this day, in Canada we have children dying daily – and reported in news almost daily – because they receive almost half of the services paid per child to the rest of Cdn children. Their lives literally subsidize the avg. Cdns lives. I know it’s not any better in the U.S.
How insane is this, that this is allowed to continue and just where are all these ‘nice’ Cdns to speak out against just incredible injustice in their own backyards? Are the U.S. citizens any different? It seems they are even less aware that Indigenous (Native Americans even still exist – Redskins, indeed!)
Of course none of this even touches the events of inequities where people are followed around stores because they are people of colour, or pulled over or harassed, arrested and jailed at rates far higher than their white counter-parts, regardless of crime.
Would any of this be likely to make a person of colour somewhat sensitive to what happens around them or to them? Perhaps. Something tells me though, that if the situations were all reversed, the race card would be referred to many times more than now.
That was an observational pondering, but all the points prior are sadly, facts and documentation for the is actually by the governments that created them.
You certainly brought up some tough subjects here and I am glad to see them being discussed.
Reblogged this on MYDAZ.BLOG .
I’ve always wondered about having a card game using the various political cards such as race card, military card, class card, …
Would it be OK if I cross-posted this article to WriterBeat.com? There is no fee; I’m simply trying to add more content diversity for our community and I enjoyed reading your work. I’ll be sure to give you codmplete credit as the authcor. If “OK” please let me know via email.
Autumn
AutumnCote@WriterBeat.com
Absolutely. Thank you for your interest.
Nice write, but the whole problem of this argument, is “insanity” everyone in America and around the world are mentally insane either they know it and trying to change or don’t know and still play the dumb game.
The simple fact is: if you associate your self to any single mono-ethnic group you are participating in racism simple as that,
So everybody is playing the racism card.
I hope the aliens didn’t stay to long! These humans are rather stupid.
I’m just not sure of your final point here about the “race card”? Let me sum it up from my perspective! There is no doubt one exists just as wolves exist, but it has lost credibility because of false claims. So, just the little boy who cried wolf when there was none – received no help and was eaten alive when a wolf actually appeared !
Was that your point or just how I see it?
I thought I had posted the above but after reading other comments and wishing to comment to them I was redirected back to this unposted.
Obviously, other commenters have forced me to expand my reply! Your Irish etc. responders attempted to shed light on the ills in their heritage and were immediately attacked and reminded of their “white privileges” a great example of THE RACE CARD. These poor me people of color have no compassion for the plight of anyone nor have any intention of giving up their self imposed first place positions as victims!
I write this, not for them because they are irredeemable- I add this for whites and others of so called white privileges- do NOT cave!
We are ALL descendants of slaves! Unless you are a direct descendent of Pharoh or some such royalty, your heritage is that of a slave! This heritage goes back to at least 3000 BC,
Currently women and children are still enslaved in the Middle East not to mention the entire country of North Korea.
So please this American slavery of 150 years is but a blip in history compared to human slavery! The difference is the privilege the blacks have of THE RACE CARD and their ability to use it along with the term white privilege!
BULLSHIT!
I thought the piece well-argued.
I am Irish and I know that Cromwell in the 17th Century sent Irish prisoners, including women, as slaves to Virginia and Barbados. This was an unsuccessful project for a number of reasons. I beiieve the British colonisers of Ireland needed Irish labour. It is also said that the Irish died of yellow fever (against which Africans had some genetic protection), rebelled and — controversially — were less used to settled agricultural life at the time than were West Africans.
Irish went to America again as settlers in the 18th Century, mostly Presbyterians and dissident Anglicans (only one Catholic among the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence). In other words, descendants a few generations forward from the colonisers that had invaded Ireland but many unhappy with sectarian treatment by the Established Church and lack of economic and political progress. Many of these settled with their families in the Southern territories of the USA and some did own slaves while some others were slave drivers and some others were small-holders or free labourers, tradesmen etc. They also contributed to some famous “Frontiersmen”.
The next big wave of Irish migration was mostly of Catholics, descendants of the ‘original’ inhabitants of ireland, driven by starvation and perscecution. Since they arrived mostly on the north-eastern coast, they were mostly single and arrived shortly before the American Civil War the men were by one means or another, not discounting free will, easily recruited into the Union Army.
The Catholic Irish migrants were despised by the WASPS and quickly began to organise themselves. They were also attacked by “nativist’ groups such as the “Know Nothings”. They are credited or blamed for creating the Democratic party and also developing the Republican party machine. The first of those was equivocal on slavery and more so on forcing the southern states and the latter was mostly of the WASPS and against slavery and for forcing abolition.
When the Civil War ended the Irish were in a much better position in the Northern states due to their social and political organisation, their numbers and their marked contribution to the fighting during the War.
Just at the point they saw the abolition of slavery and the resulting migration to the northern towns of black ex-slaves and perceived it as a threat to their own position in society. From this point on many Irish of Catholic background began to refuse to work alongside black workers and a substantial part of them became racist in thought and in practice. Of course, some also became anti-racist campaigners, civil rights lawyers, trade union organisers.
The irish went from being slaves to being despised ‘free men’ to being citizens and unfortunately the principle that citizenship is for all on an equal basis was not widely embraced in the community. But their history for a period, along with other examples around the world, does demonstrate that racism is not always built on colour (although nowadays, in the USA, it is).
So much for the Irish and Racism.
It is also true that discussion of racism has to take account of social class and the fact that it rarely does is I think partly responsible for the anger of white working class people.
In a police shooting at a crowd, a white worker has a better chance of survival than a black lawyer or businessman. That is an example of white privilege.
But a black businessman or lawyer will usually get a much better deal from the system in ordinary situations than a poor white worker. That’s about class.
Of course, it is also a fact that a businessman or lawyer in the US is more likely to be white than black.
To me it seems clear that among workers and the lower middle class and the poor, blacks, whites, Latinos etc would ALL benefit from joining forces against the tiny group of mostly white blood-sucking vampires sitting far up on the top of the USA heap.
As a black woman, I’ve struggled with the idea of the “race card” for most of my life. I grew up in a predominantly black area, Detroit, and never saw anyone being discriminated against based on race. When I moved to predominantly white Northern Michigan for college…I carried that with me. The race card and discrimination didn’t exist anymore. How could it? This is America..WE wouldn’t allow that.
So, if you were black and didn’t get the job…you needed to work harder, study more, be better. That was until I was told by my white boss that I needed “to talk to my parents about how the world works” after I overheard her saying she wasn’t hiring a black dentist for one of the other locations.
This is the world…this is MY America. I was so shocked. So, a black man wouldn’t get the job because he’s black and if the white guy gets the job…it would partially and unknowingly be because of his white privilege. That’s the crazy part. He would go through the rest of his life denying the existence of privilege that he enjoys everyday.
That moment opened my eyes and gave me a new sense of understanding. I can’t be upset when white people don’t believe the “race card” is a real thing. I thought the same! My life experiences taught me otherwise…life experiences that white people will probably have the pleasure of enduring. Now comes the race card card…I can believe that for sure.
…by the way…I plan to become a dentist 🙂
Obviously, other commenters have forced me to expand my reply! Your Irish etc. responders attempted to shed light on the ills in their heritage and were immediately attacked and reminded of their “white privileges” a great example of THE RACE CARD. These “poor me” people of color have no compassion for the plight of anyone nor have any intention of giving up their self imposed first place positions as victims!
I write this, not for them because they are irredeemable- I add this for whites and others of so called white privileges- do NOT cave!
We are ALL descendants of slaves! Unless you are a direct descendent of Pharoh or some such royalty, your heritage is that of a slave! This heritage goes back to at least 3000 BC,
Currently women and children are still enslaved in the Middle East not to mention the entire country of North Korea.
So please this American slavery of 150 years is but a blip in history compared to human slavery! The difference is the privilege the blacks have of THE RACE CARD and their ability to use it along with the term white privilege!
BULLSHIT!
It might be that someone descended from slaves 3,000 years ago is a bit less impacted by this fact than someone who is only a generation or two removed from explicit segregation.
As it stands, the most overtly hateful comments in this thread are coming from you.
By the way was I clear that a descendant of slaves Of 3000 years ago as were we all – I was also directly impacted not a generation or two removed but grew up in an interracial family, watch their house burn and suffer the consequences with my children of moving my uncle in with me till their Home was rebuilt .
Besides your white guilt that you’ve decided to carry on your back how close are you to the situation?
Your argument from biography does nothing to address the shortcomings of the rant you’ve dropped onto this page, and no, I am not interested in submitting my own life history for your examination. Goodbye.
Um, no, lots of people are not descended from slaves. Serfs, peasants, commoners, but not everyone was a slave. And as pointed out above, slavery in the US has considerably more impact on America today than slavery in ancient Greece.
http://historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistoriesResponsive.asp?historyid=ac41
I removed a comment from FreeMeNow. I see no reason to continue engaging her at this point.
Hateful? You have no I dea who I am and yet you accuse my comments of being hurtful because some … well let me put it this way, just how many decendants of American slaves exist? I’ll bet not as many as the decendents of the northern white soldiers that died trying to free them?
What about their white privileges?
The favorite of all my uncles is black, he married my white privileged aunt in the 50’s so they lived with me after their house was burned to the ground- I know a lot about hurtful! I also know a lot about how much things have changed!
I especially know that I don’t want my two black great grandchildren growing up in a country that discriminates against whites or carries grudges because part of there heritage were slaves in those country in the 1800’s and the other at some other time in some other place!
No- I want them to know they will be judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin!
Hateful – you bet your sweet ass – this bullshit is just that! Read about the migration of the southern blacks to the north from the 1930’s to the 70’s – thru Jim Crow- they despised the spoiled northern lazy blacks with chips on thei sholders!
My uncle was one such man- he was a giant in my eyes and never thought I had white privileges!
This conversation will go nowhere because you can’t handle the truth without shooting back with the racr card! And like the boy who cried wolf – when it is real ( and it will be real sometimes) no one will believe you!
I certainly won’t because you just pulled it on me!
I do not need to know who you are. Your comments speak for themselves.
Loved the post. Consequently, I have decided to follow you. I’m Puerto Rican. My 3.8 GPA got me accepted into Holy Cross University. Imagine my surprise when the priest who was my advisor told me that I was fortunate to have been accepted because “my kind” were not usually allowed through the entrance process. That was 30 years ago and it was the first time I felt less than my peers. It was not the last time I experienced such behavior. The Race card exists and so does the Race Card card. Thanks for attempting to understand.
Great article! You are so right- Thanks for stopping by and following my blog. Best to you !
I enjoyed your post. I’m still chewing through it. It’s interesting that it’s only been 50 some years since the end of “legal” segregation and we wonder why the issue of race continues to come up. We act life a few measures within this short period of time have reversed the 300+ years of injustice that founded this great Country. Seems we want to act like it almost never happened so there is no need to address the repercussions of it. As long as we are unwilling to talk about where our past has lead us and the problems it has left us, specifically about race. The race card will always be a game, and the Nation continually pitted against itself.