Playing the race card is an idiomatic phrase that refers to the exploitation of either racist or anti-racist attitudes in the audience. Usage The phrase is commonly used to allege 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 past as reasons to draw his credibility as a witness into question. Stanford 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 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.George Dei, et al., in the 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. ...