"fellow" = "A black man"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yeah. "Boy" is different because it's become iconic. And why? Because
servants/slaves were customarily referred to and addressed as "boy." Cf. the
now discredited custom of addressing waitresses as "Miss."  Waiters,
bellboys, and others, regardless of race, were also formerly addressed as
"boy" in situations where the boss or the customer was calling for
service. Undoubtedly, in a more naive world, the practice was not ordinarily
intended to be demeaning: the social context simply made it so, and
increasingly so as the established classist attitudes toward servitude and
boss/worker relationships of all kinds began to erode.

AFAIK, "fellow" was not so used, or not enough to become iconic. Go figure.
But it would still be a mistake to *define* "boy," even in the
invidious sense, as "a black man."  What is logically required in a case
like this is not a formal definition but a note on the offensive
connotations of the usage (which is *defined* as "a male servant, menial, or
(formerly) slave, regardless of age.)

Or so it seems to me.

JL
On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 8:28 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "fellow" = "A black man"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Should it be mentioned (though the point is probably obvious) that the case
> with "boy" is different?  Even though white men might refer to each other as
> "boys," the term can have more specific, derrogatory applications as applied
> to an African American man.
>
> A (white) friend of mine told of sitting next to a fellow parent, an
> African American man, at a high school football game, who took offense at
> the amicably-intended query, "Which one is your boy?"
>
> --Charlie
>
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