I felt compelled to write this letter when, in the past three days, I had heard the phrase ‘white boy’ more times than I care to remember.

Just a few examples: In “There’s Something About Mary,” Matt Dillon’s character was identified as a “corn-fed white boy.” On MTV, a fan of the Backstreet Boys professed that her friends always asked her “Why do you like them white boys?” Walking back from lunch one day, I heard someone say, “Damn! That white boy’s tall!” (I’m 6’5″.) In all three instances, the people using such vocabulary were black.

If I, a white male, were to call a black male a “black boy” and said it with the same derogatory emotion with which “white boy” is paired, I would probably be labeled as a bigot and a racist who “couldn’t see past the color of his skin.”

Luckily for me, I do not feel compelled to call someone a “black boy.” In fact, the thought of doing so does not enter my mind. I am not writing this to fight for my social right to use the phrase “black boy.”

My problem stems from the connotation always conveyed whenever someone uses “white boy” to describe another. “White boy” is accompanied by a smirk and an expression of either ridicule or weakness. Why this came to be is beyond me, and anyone who considers this connotation appropriate is rather lacking in intellect.

“White boy” in practice makes a poor descriptive term, as it usually describes white men, not boys.

How then did it ever become socially acceptable?

I do not have that answer. I do know that it is meant to belittle the person it describes.

In my opinion, people who use the phrase white boy not only reveal themselves to possess a rather juvenile thought process, but, more importantly, they thereby segregate and attempt to insult people based on their color.

That is racism and serves an extremely divisive role in an American culture made up of virtually every race of humanity. People who wish to insult others because of their ethnicity — which I believe the phrase ‘white boy’ and its connotation does — are guilty of racism.

I wish that such emotions were absent from people’s minds, and I feel that constraining use of the phrase ‘white boy’ is a step toward eradicating racist feelings.

Daniel Nelsen

Junior

Geology