Real Americans is a racist dog whistle

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Look at who uses it, and whom they intend to exclude by using it. Let's face it, Urban people are definitely not Real Americans to the people who use that partition to categorize people.

I know people will dispute the allegation, but I'd more like to hear from a Trump supporter who can admit that the term gets used in a lot of vile, racialized ways, and firmly reject it with more than a glib denial. Seriously, I want that so much it hurts. I may sound mean, but it cuts me to the bone that I have relatives who use the term to degrade my friends, and that most of the people in my old home state consider themselves Real Americans to the exclusion of anyone who behaves in a way they find weird.

You're the one giving it a racial connotation, is that how you define what a Real American is?

If I'm to understand what the two words mean when they're put together, in the most logically consistent fashion, it connotes that there is a correct way to understand the philosophy of what America is and stands for. I would have to guess that a 'real American' would be someone who firmly believes in and supports the Constitution, Bill of Rights, the three branch governmental system, and would politically fight against people who are working to either undermine elements of the Bill of Rights or working to replace our founding documents with something they seem more appropriate which would definitionally be a foreign system.

I'm really not for buzzwords like these because even used with the best of intent they play on atavisms and I've noticed, to the degree we've been running our politics and public discourse on atavisms lately, it's both an anti-intellectual habit to get into and it seems to trip anti-intellectual circuits in people in the broader sense. Also, whether true American liberal or racial identity movement, anyone can theoretically co-opt the same words and mean very different things.

My other problem with buzzwords - they have a way of tarring language use in the long term and breaking down word utility.

I think the point of the term dog whistle or code is silence and censor opposition, a 'real American' only has racial connotations if that is what is being implied which I don't believe it is. Lots of people define what they think a 'real American' is by their own definition; Hillary did and it hurt her a lot by calling half of Trump supporters deplorable, irredeemable, and unAmerican. I think when conservatives speak about 'real Americans' they're talking about other conservatives, if you're a traditionalist then you'd probably be more apt to see far left progressivism that is concentrated fabulously rich coastal cities or academia/media the privileged institutions in this country as something foreign.

You hear the flip side of this of course but usually it comes across as condescending and classist towards working and lower class whites who have been held in disdain by the aristocracy that has controlled this country since the time the first colonists step foot here. There has always been a game of divide and conquer played by the elites in this country, they have to keep the lower classes(relative to their .00000001%) at each others throats or else they might start realizing they share a common enemy. There really is an open acceptance of this racist classist depiction of white people that is never called out, a lot of TV is basically a modern day minstrel show in this regard and would never be tolerated with the stereotypical offensive depiction of any other race. The feeling is mutual, this open hatred and intolerance from the left needs to stop. They have to accept there a people who do not agree with them and that they cannot be forced to heel, it's never really about someone's personal right it seems but rather more about forcing people to stop believing what you don't like and to shove your own ideology down their throat like or not because they'd be irredeemable bigots otherwise according to their logic.

I believe that the term is often being used in a racial way often enough to discuss that aspect. I base that on how often avowed racists use it that way, and how similar the remarks of otherwise decent people sound. Minus the explicit racism, obviously.

In what percentage of cases of the use of the phrase "real American/s" do you believe there is a racist context.

What are your thoughts on "Black Lives Matter"?

Have you ever heard of a loaded question? Have you stopped beating your wife?

I'm backing people into a corner by asking a Trump supporter to reject obvious, implicit racism? It does appear that I am. Sorry. I guess I won't get what I want out of this thread, after all. A big part of the discontent in his supporters seems to come from people like me asking them to stop saying things that sound racist, so I guess I should have expected it.

You can keep denying it all you want, but as long as the administration keeps using the favored language of open racists, I'll keep wondering why you would go to such lengths.

Trump, his supporters, and his views are not racist so I don't feel the need to give credence to what you said and apologize for something that is not true to begin with.