{"id":14954,"date":"2016-05-15T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2016\/05\/15\/bill-to-remove-oriental-from-federal-law-passes-senate\/"},"modified":"2016-05-15T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T12:00:00","slug":"bill-to-remove-oriental-from-federal-law-passes-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2016\/05\/15\/bill-to-remove-oriental-from-federal-law-passes-senate\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill to Remove &#8220;Oriental&#8221; from Federal Law Passes Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/asian-america\/bill-remove-oriental-federal-law-passes-senate-heads-obama-n5715\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON, USA, May 13, 2016 (by Emil Guillermo, NBC News): On May 9, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would remove the word &#8220;Oriental&#8221; from the last known laws in the United States Code where it applies to a person. Now the bill is on its way to President Obama for final approval. The legislation changes two laws in Title 42 of the U.S. Code, striking all references of &#8220;a Negro, Puerto Rican, American Indian, Eskimo, Oriental, or Aleut or is a Spanish speaking individual of Spanish descent,&#8221; inserting instead &#8220;an Asian American, Native Hawaiian, a Pacific Islander, African American, Hispanic, Puerto Rican, Native American, or an Alaska Native.&#8221; It&#8217;s origins are in the era of European colonization when the terms &#8220;Orient&#8221; and &#8220;Oriental&#8221; were used to describe Asia and Asian peoples as backward, inferior, exotic, and foreign in order to justify colonization and subjugation,&#8221; says Erika Lee, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, and the author of, &#8220;The Making of Asian America: A History.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the U.S., the term &#8220;Oriental&#8221; has been used to reinforce the idea that Asians were\/are forever foreign and could never become American. These ideas helped to justify immigration exclusion, racial discrimination and violence, political disfranchisement, and segregation.&#8221; Lee said continued use of the term only &#8220;perpetuates inequality, disrespect, discrimination, and stereotypes towards Asian Americans, a group that remains largely underrepresented in American politics despite their status as the fastest growing group in the U.S.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source WASHINGTON, USA, May 13, 2016 (by Emil Guillermo, NBC News): On May 9, the Senate unanimously passed a bill,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}