Thanks for the history lesson. This is all new information. [/sarcasm]


I believe words by themselves are just words with no magic powers.
I believe words depending on usage, who is using them, and context can be very powerful.
I also believe most people are smart enough to understand the difference.

But, for anyone who is having trouble following along, here are some examples.

A black man gets pulled over in a rural Mississippi area by a local sheriff, who says to him, "Whatcha doin' around here, boy?" Clearly extremely inappropriate.

I show up at my nephew's 21st birthday party and say, "How's the birthday boy?" Nothing wrong here (and to be clear, my nephew is black).

As to the post that started this, until given contrary information, I will assume the example is about a young male.

Unless you’re also a young black male, using boy when referring to a black youth is offensive

Birthday boy is an exclusion

What about if it's a mixed race group setting? Could you say "ok let's have all the boys go over to this side of the room and the girls to the other?"

Exactly what thinking goes into the "birthday boy" exclusion? Can it be applied anywhere else? Or is this the only one?

I just didn’t want to argue about it but it’s the word boy being used on its own as it’s often used in pace of the N word.

Birthday boy isn’t the same as calling a brown or black personality “boy”


The boys and the girls are plural and is also two words.

Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. Context matters.

no its not context, its two different ideas.

birthday boy is not the same as boy

A 7 year old juvenile. No one on earth is saying this.

A 7 year old kid. Ok, fine. But is it a male or female? Are we not allowed no know? A seven year old male kid? Great description, not weird at all.

A 7 year old minor. Seriously?

A 7 year old offspring. Ok, I think we're done.

I don't feel like I say 'boy' very much or would use it too much unless I was specifically contrasting it with 'girl'.

Like "there were two kids, a boy and a girl maybe around 5...." Would be fine. Otherwise I'd probably just say 'kid'.

It's a pretty common term in youth sports. Boys U13 soccer team and girls U12 basketball team doesn't strike me as inherently offensive, and anyone who thinks it is almost certainly is pushing an agenda.

As someone else pointed out, a grown white man calling a 16 year old black kid "boy" like you are a sheriff in Mississippi in 1962 is hugely problematic.

There is an obvious difference between using the word boy to refer to a young male and addressing someone as "boy". I wouldn't do the latter even if I were speaking to a 5yo white male, it's just rude.
I can't imagine anyone having a problem with the former.

Were Boyz 2 Men closet racists?

How about the rap group "The Fat Boys"? (Did a great cover of "The Twist")

This forum is absolutely obsessed with being deliberately obtuse about simple English words.

Who do you think is being obtuse?
The one person who thinks referring to a 10yo black male as a boy is racist, or everyone who disagrees with him?

I think literally everyone involved with the last page of posts knows perfectly well how the word "boy" is used. It makes the whole convo so bizarre.

To me it's bizarre that one person thought the normal use of the word was racist. Everyone else is just reacting to that craziness.

Part of the craziness seems to involve asking intentionally dumb questions like "is Boys 2 Men racist?" and asking people to explain how to use the word "boy" to them as if it's unclear somehow.

We were told it's never ok to use the word 'boy' to refer to a young black male, so asking if Boyz 2 Men are self-hating seems completely valid. Why would you think otherwise?

Perhaps your definition of context is not the same as mine.

Maybe you don’t understand that to compare context, first the things must be remarkable similar if not the same.

You wouldn’t take two different ideas and compare them under the same context.

Birthday boy and boy are two completely different ideas, the context doesn’t matter.

I agree with PointlessWords on this one.

'Birthday boy' is a complex-noun that contains the word 'boy', while 'boy' is a separate but related noun.

I want to make sure I understand this

You were told it’s never ok to use the word boy to refer to a young black male

What does that have to do with the name of a group called “boyz to men”?

Do you think the word “boy” is the same as the words “boyz to men?”

Because I'm an adult who knows how to use words like "boy" in context? You don't think Boys 2 Men is racist just like the guy who asks the question thinks it isn't racist yet we get this forum game of grown men pretending to be confused over simple things. It's quite bizarre.

It's the same lexeme. That's why we need clarification.

Maybe we just like discussing language?