race card

race card noun: the invocation of a person's race in order to gain sympathy or an advantage.

Noun

race card (plural race cards)

(derogatory, often) The invocation of a person's race in order to gain sympathy or an advantage.
- to play the race card
- “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill?” he wrote. “We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems unfair to C.Q. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter.”2025 February 22, Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, Jonathan Swan, quoting Pete Hegseth, “Trump Fires Joint Chiefs Chairman Amid Flurry of Dismissals at Pentagon”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
A printed card or pamphlet giving information about a series of horse races and listing the horses to be run; a racebook.

race card (third-person singular simple present race cards, present participle race carding, simple past and past participle race carded)

To invoke race in a discussion in order to gain sympathy or an advantage in that discussion.

Noun
plural	race cards
Verb
third-person singular present	race cards
present participle	race carding
past participle	race carded
past	race carded

What does race card mean?: Race card means the invocation of a person's race in order to gain sympathy or an advantage.
What part of speech is race card?: Race card can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of race card?: The plural of race card is race cards.

Adapted from Wiktionary: race card (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-race card.wav.

Cite this entry: “race card.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/race_card. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.