By Madina Toure
President Barack Obama has signed into law a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Flushing) that removes the term “Oriental” from federal law.
The bipartisan bill, which Obama signed last week, during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, will eliminate all references to “Oriental” and replace it with “Asian Americans.” When Meng was a member of the state Legislature in 2009, she also passed legislation that removed the term from all official New York state documents.
“The term ‘Oriental’ has no place in federal law and at long last this insulting and outdated term will be gone for good,” Meng said. “No longer will any law of the United States refer to Asian Americans in such an offensive way, and I applaud and thank President Obama for signing my bill to get rid of this antiquated term.”
Title 42 of the U.S. Code contains federal laws that address public health, social welfare and civil rights. Its references to “Oriental,” written in the 1970s, are the last two instances in U.S. law in which the term is used to describe an individual.
The word appears in the text of the Department of Energy Organization Act and the Local Public Works Capital Development and Investment Act of 1976. Last year, Meng found that the term was still used in Title 42 when she was doing standard legislative research.
Meng’s bill was first passed by the House Dec. 2 as an amendment to the North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act. But the measure stalled in Congress and Obama threatened to veto it because of unrelated provisions in the bill, so the House unanimously passed a freestanding version of her measure Feb. 29. Meng’s bill was then unanimously passed by the Senate May 9, getting 76 co-sponsors, including all 51 members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
Reach reporter Madina Toure by e-mail at mtour
