The term "playing the race card" is a pejorative (I'm not sure people understand that's how it's received by those to which it is directed). It should be banished from our daily language, it reduces the serious subject of racism to the status of a game, it belittles those who suffer under its caustic effects and is used, mainly, to stifle conversation about race thereby enabling racism to shield itself from scrutiny.

When a person uses the term, it immediately gives the impression that THEY are racist, even though they may not be. The best counter to ANY statement,arugment or event is well reasoned counter argument.

The term was created in the wake of the O.J. Simpson verdict, which is enough, in my opinion, to throw it on the scrap heap to begin with;

The Origins of Race as "Card"

First, let us consider the history of this notion: namely, that the "race card" is something people of color play so as to distract the rest of us, or to gain sympathy. For most Americans, the phrase "playing the race card" entered the national lexicon during the O.J. Simpson trial. Robert Shapiro, one of Simpson’s attorneys famously claimed, in the aftermath of his client’s acquittal, that co-counsel Johnnie Cochran had "played the race card, and dealt it from the bottom of the deck." The allegation referred to Cochran’s bringing up officer Mark Fuhrman’s regular use of the ‘n-word’ as potentially indicative of his propensity to frame Simpson. To Shapiro, whose own views of his client’s innocence apparently shifted over time, the issue of race had no place in the trial, and even if Fuhrman was a racist, this fact had no bearing on whether or not O.J. had killed his ex-wife and Ron Goldman. In other words, the idea that O.J. had been framed because of racism made no sense and to bring it up was to interject race into an arena where it was, or should have been, irrelevant.

That a white man like Shapiro could make such an argument, however, speaks to the widely divergent way in which whites and blacks view our respective worlds. For people of color–especially African Americans–the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware. Indeed, there has been a history of such misconduct on the part of law enforcement, and for black folks to think those bad old days have ended is, for many, to let down their guard to the possibility of real and persistent injury.

So if a racist cop is the lead detective in a case, and the one who discovers blood evidence implicating a black man accused of killing two white people, there is a logical alarm bell that goes off in the head of most any black person, but which would remain every bit as silent in the mind of someone who was white. And this too is understandable: for most whites, police are the helpful folks who get your cat out of the tree, or take you around in their patrol car for fun. For us, the idea of brutality or misconduct on the part of such persons seems remote, to the point of being fanciful. It seems the stuff of bad TV dramas, or at the very least, the past–that always remote place to which we can consign our national sins and predations, content all the while that whatever demons may have lurked in those earlier times have long since been vanquished.

To whites, blacks who alleged racism in the O.J. case were being absurd, or worse, seeking any excuse to let a black killer off the hook–ignoring that blacks on juries vote to convict black people of crimes every day in this country. And while allegations of black "racial bonding" with the defendant were made regularly after the acquittal in Simpson’s criminal trial, no such bonding, this time with the victims, was alleged when a mostly white jury found O.J. civilly liable a few years later. Only blacks can play the race card, apparently; only they think in racial terms, at least to hear white America tell it.[1]

I'm reminded of how a John McCain’s campaign manager responded to the Obama campaign's objection to McCain's Brittney Spears/Paris Hilton ad during the 2008 presidential campaign;

The most recent ad compares the presumptive Democratic nominee for president to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton — suggesting to voters that he’s nothing more than a bubble-headed, publicity-seeking celebrity.

The ad gave us an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006. That assault, too, began with videos juxtaposing Mr. Ford with young, white women.

Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain on the ploy, saying, quite rightly, that the Republicans are trying to scare voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills.’’

But Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, had a snappy answer. “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’

The retort was, we must say, not only contemptible, but shrewd. It puts the sin for the racial attack not on those who made it, but on the victim of the attack.[2]

It seems that with the election of Mr. Obama this term has gotten plenty of work.  I've noticed it's become a regular tool by some people around the vine in their attempt to shut down conversation and /or delete posts.  I've participated in several seeds lately where, at the first mention of race or racism, viners quickly throw out the "playing the race" and begin deleting posts and making COH threats. I say lets banish this made up term to the scrap heap of the English  language and American culture.

source: 

[1] http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/04/24/what-kind-of-card-is-race/

[2] http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/say-what-john-mccain-barack-obama-and-the-race-card/