Coolie - Modern Use

Modern Use

• In the 1899 novelette "Typhoon" by Joseph Conrad, the captain is transporting a group of coolies in the South China Sea.

• In the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai, when his men are ordered to participate with the construction of the bridge, British officer Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness) declares that they will not be used as coolies by their captors.

• In Indonesian, kuli is now a term for construction workers.

• In Malay, "kuli" is an Asian slave.

• In Thai, kuli (กุลี) still retains its original meaning as manual labourers, but is considered to be offensive.

• In September 2005 the Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand used this term when referring to the laborers who built the new international airport. He thanked them for their hard work. Reuters, a news source from Bangkok, reported of Thai labor groups angered by his use of the term.

• In South Africa, Coolie often referred to Indian people, but is no longer an accepted term and is considered derogatory.

• The word qūlī is now commonly used in Hindi to refer to luggage porters at hotel lobbies and railway and bus stations. Nevertheless, the use of such (especially by foreigners) may still be regarded as a slur by some.

• In Ethiopia, Cooli are those who carry heavy loads for someone. The word is not used as a slur however. The term used to refer to Arab day-laborers who migrated to Ethiopia for labor work.

• The Dutch word koelie, refers to a worker who performs very hard, exacting labour. The word generally has no particular ethnic connotations among the Dutch, but is used as a slur amongst Surinamese to designate Hindustanis.

• Among overseas Vietnamese, coolie ("cu li" in Vietnamese) now means a person who works a part-time job.

• In Finland, when freshmen of a technical university take care of student union club tasks (usually arranging a party or such activity), they are referred as "kuli" or performing a "kuli duty".

• In the United States Marine Corps, a Lance Corporal is sometimes referred to jokingly as a "Lance Coolie", due to their often being picked for work details or chosen to perform menial tasks not related to their actual Military Occupational Specialty, especially in units that do not have many Privates or PFCs.

• In Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago & Jamaica, coolie is used loosely to refer to anyone of East Indian descent. It is sometimes used in a racial context and sometimes used in friendly banter.

• In many English-speaking countries, the conical Asian hat worn by many Asians to protect themselves from the sun is called a "coolie hat."

• In the I.T. industry, offshore workers are sometimes referred to as 'coolies' because of their lower cost.

• The term "coolie" appears in the Eddy Howard song, "The Rickety Rickshaw Man". (It was the rickshaw that was rickety.)

• Poet and semiologist Khal Torabully coined the word coolitude to refer to a vision of humanism and diversity born from the indenture or coolie experience. This poetics is studied at university level so as to encompass a new dynamics of migration originating from the encounter of indentured persons and other cultural spheres, namely from postcolonial and postmodern perspectives.

• In Turkish, köle is the term for slave.