In the “What I Hear When You Say Race Card” video http://www.pbs.org/whatihear/web-series/race-card/, a professor, a comedian, and an artist break down their interpretation about the “race card.” The three of them talked about how people of color experience microaggressions from the moment of birth and how it is a constant and continual experience that they have.

I liked this video because it discussed a topic, I was not familiar with which is the expression “playing the race card.” I understood from the video that it is a style and signals used by some to clarify racist references and different ideas to win arguments, and from these references mentioning race in discussions that have nothing to do with race. I think that when someone says, “Don’t pull out your race card,” it is a subtle aggression because it nullifies the experience of a person of color who is constantly facing racism. An example of this is the woman who appeared in the video and said to the student in the video, “You will withdraw the race card because she mentioned the word “woman of color” who was trying to enter in discussions about topics that no one else felt comfortable discussing.

One of the things that caught my attention and admired as well, and although I have never been criticized or attacked before but now, I can recognize and acknowledge it too, the point I learned from watching this video is that micro-aggressions are subtle racist expressions that people ignore as trivial. And that aggression and racism remain.

I realized that many of the people in the video have experienced interpersonal racism, which is what white people do to people of color near racial jokes, harassment, threats, etc… People? You know because of your eyes, “So what are you guys talking about in Japan? Asian?”. Also, I can link this video to the “Othering” article we’re reading.

We must all admit that society contains many negatives that harm many human beings. We need to understand the issue of race more than that and know the pros and cons of this issue. In addition, the recognition of “color blindness” or “insensitivity to race” is ironic. She claims that these distinctions do not exist and that we all start from the same point. No, we don’t.