Let’s put this out there - the “race card” is by and large a tool used by conservatives to stop people from talking about race, particularly as it relates to African-Americans.
In 2000, Donna Brazile was accused by Colin Powell of playing the race card because she pointed out that Republicans are awful on issues of race and toted out their few prominent black people in order to mask that. The South Carolina GOP chair accused Democrats of playing the race card because they complained about polling places in black neighborhoods being shut down. For some reason, the chair considered this an act of fear on the part of the Democrats, who didn’t want black people voting in the GOP primary. Or something. I also remember some rumblings about the race card being played in 2000 when John McCain waffled back and forth between supporting and not supporting South Carolina’s Confederate-tinged state flag.
In every case someone was doing something right - pointing out a problem the GOP had with race in a forthright and honest fashion. And in every case, the GOP immediately declared race itself a shameful and awful thing that immediately taints any discussion, no matter how racial its undertones already were. It makes the entire debate about whether or not the inner Jesse Jackson of all black people has come out and is trying to stomp around and extort various concessions from cowed white people, rather than what actually happened. And our political media being the bravely intrepid fuckwits that they are, it always - always - turns into a debate over whether the “race card” was actually played.