Dave's wife, your article should be interesting reading.

Words, phrases and their interpretation seem to be a real problem in the United States; sometimes it is hard to keep up.

"Boy" is one such word; elsewhere it still is used and spoken without the racial baggage it has been forced to carry in the United States. There seems to be a tendency, however, for Americans to impose their prejudices regarding 'stigmatized' speech on people outside of the U. S. who have little or no knowledge of the reasons behind the 'prohibitions.'
Or the reasons may be different, e. g. one doesn't degrade a servant by calling him a boy in these democratic times but it is OK to call a boy a boy and a girl a girl when age is the point of the word, or familiar usage is involved.