I see I was wrong. I found a better phrase to search in Google to find many more examples of existing use. One is the movie "Not a Feather, but a Dot", with a t

I see I was wrong. I found a better phrase to search in Google to find many more examples of existing use. One is the movie "Not a Feather, but a Dot", with a trailer at http://morristowngreen.com/2013/05/28/meet-director-of-movie-about-indian-american-experience-june-6-at-morristown-library/ http://morristowngreen.com/2013/05/28/meet-director-of-movie... and the movie site at http://www.notafeather.com http://www.notafeather.com . I still don't think it's common, though I agree it's not rare. I provided counter-evidence that my observations are not solely biased by the people I know nor the regions I've lived in. To flip your question around, perhaps you are in the one region of the US where people do that? The other part of my response was because I didn't like the wriggle room in your paragraph describing how being 'casually racist in informal conversation is still a "thing" in the United States' and that such uses are 'very inappropriate in most cases and should be avoided especially in formal communication.' HN is full of informal conversation. Is HN casual enough that it's one of the few places where this "thing" is appropriate? I don't think that's what you meant. I wanted to make a more firm statement which removes that possible interpretation.