Jack writes: The term persists in the name “busboy” which is still used. Because of child labor laws, menial jobs that were once done by children or young teens (e.g. bellboy, shoe shine boy) are now done by full grown adults but the “boy” description still sometimes attaches. In other cases (“ball boy”) the job is still done by children (though often nowadays by girls).
Naturally, being the lowest skilled, the grown men who replaced children in these menial jobs were often black but the job title was still “boy” – there was no racial angle. In the old days, IQ was sometimes express as mental age, so it’s not surprising that a job once done by a white 12 year old would become one that a black 16+ year old was capable of in the age of child labor laws.
