Correct, I never, ever, ever said it was appropriate, it is decidedly not. If you look up a couple posts I highlighted the problems with using it on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11985794). I don't expect that it would be in written word to often either. Point is its common enough that I've heard it several times over many years from several different people. Perhaps you don't talk to too many casually racist people or it is regional.

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... and the movie site at 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.

>Almost every single one referring to people uses that phrase in a derogatory way.

Well, a famous movie that won an Oscar has said line in it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CqeOU5V47w

I wouldn't claim that the phrase is PC, and it is indeed lazy in written form, but people need to get over being so easily offended on behalf of others.

Yes, it seems that phrase is more common than I originally assumed. That said, movies use derogatory terms, even Oscar winning movies.

People need to get over the word "PC". It's a nearly meaningless term because it comes with the pejorative assumption that the reasoning behind it is always excessive.

Do you have any word for "politically correct but not excessively so, so I think I'll change my language"? Or is every such suggestion inherently based on offense and therefore easily dismissed?

Because my statement above was to show pictures of Puebloans in Santa Fe from now and from 100 years ago, and argue that "feather" makes about as much sense as calling a 6th generation true son of Georgia a Yankee.

Are you going to go to the South and start calling everyone Yankees? Or would that not be politically correct?