When "Boys" Are

Not to be "Boys"

A New Edict by Moresby's Planners

SOME Territories’ “old hands” are laughing, and some are jeering, over the latest example of Administration Brown-brother fatuousness. The Admin tration has placed a tabu upon the use of the word “boy,” as applied to adult natives.

“Boy,” to indicate a coloured man— usually a native man in service—is as *. old as Pidgin English itself, and there is nothing offensive or derogatory in it There are two words, commonly applied to native males in the Australian Ter ritories —“coon” and “boong”—which are derogatory and even offensive; and the use of these terms might properly be dis couraged. But there is no sound case be hind Moresby’s attempt to outlaw “boy.”

The development is in the shape of a Government circular to all public ser vants. They are requested to refrain altogether from the use of the term “boy”; and, where the term comes into use in other connections, the following sub stitutes are brightly suggested:— Present term. Suggested alternative.

Boss-boy Foreman Boy-house Native quarters Boy-proofing .. .. Burglar-proofing The latest silly story going the rounds in the Territories describes how an official approached a trio of native workers.

“Where is the foreman?” he said, con scientiously refraining from the use of the easy Pidgin. The boys could not understand, until he had repeated it two or three times. Then the most intelligent pointed out that there were not four men there —there were only three!

The Government circular ties in with various other incidents, which have been received with derision in the Territories —the reception at Government House luncheon-table of Papuan ex-POW’s, for instance, and the official hand-shaking and bowing when representatives cf the natives are being greeted.

Generally, Territorians appreciate efforts to raise the status of natives, and they admire the grim purposefulness of the Administrator in trying to carry out the ideas of Mr. E. j. Ward and his starry-eyed planners: but, in their opinion, these attempts, at this stage, simply invite ridicule. Time enough to make a gentleman out of Fuzzy-wuzzy when Fuzzy’s standards of living have moved further away from the jungle and the Stone Age. And that will not be for another generation or two.

Native men will be “boys”, and Pidgin English will be the lingua franca of New Guinea long after the Wardist re gime is only an hilarious and never to-be-forgotten memory.