From the tone of this blog you may have guessed that I often get into heated discussions about race all over the internet. It’s true, I admit it. I am angry in many and varied forms. 98% of these discussions devolve quickly due to people’s inability to have a dialogue about things they are A) ignorant of and B) uncomfortable with. When someone backs these people into a corner they usually pull out their one last weapon to use against me. They say something like: “Why do you black people always have to play the race card?” or “You’re just playing the race card!”

This usually has the effect of scattering the discussion into a bunch of smaller squabbles and the offending ignoramus gets away with not really addressing an issue. This is because most black people don’t quite know how to react to this statement. It’s belittling and dismissive and nonsensical all at once. Different people will try to attack it from different angles, but it’s almost as good a discussion ender as calling one side or the other ‘like Hitler’.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this concept of a Race Card. What is it? Is it the Jack of Spades? Or one of those Chance cards from Monopoly? (You look at a white woman wrong in the grocery store, go directly to jail) Maybe the race card is part of the Tarot deck and stands for the ability to never get ahead in any aspect of life simply due to a mistake of birth.

Or maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t exist.

No matter what the race card actually is (or isn’t), there is something white people need to understand: I’m not playing it at all. This isn’t some kind of game to me. The fact that issues which affect my entire life and the lives of billions of people on this planet are dismissed with a crude allusion to game play is not only rude, but ignorant and cowardly as well.

Let me repeat that: This Is Not A Game.

So don’t play games with me. If my bringing up race makes you uncomfortable, then the problem lies with you, not with me. Maybe you should take a step back and examine that feeling for a while before you try to engage me in debate again. I’ll tell you right now, you aren’t going to put me off or derail the conversation with this shit anymore.