Buried in November’s HR8, the North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act of 2015, is a small House of Representatives amendment calling for the removal of ethnic terms from US government documents.
Along with the many additions to this document is the following bi-parisan amendment, which “Strikes terms such as ‘Oriental’ and ‘Negro’ from two sections of title 42 of the U.S. Code, and replaces them with culturally appropriate terms.”
The two sections of US Code affected are further outlined in a document posted on the House of Representative’s website, shown in the image below.
Once these two sections of US Code are changed, one would hope that derogatory ethnic terms will not spring up in other places in government documents — on a national, state, or local level.
For more information on HR8 and other legislation before the House, visit the official website: rules.house.gov.
Ed. Note: Not to editorialize this article, but in this American’s opinion, striving for use of only culturally appropriate terms, combined with equal treatment of everyone under US Codes of law, would be the ideal to strive for during out lifetime. I’d hate to see the Representatives of our children and grandchildren still spending time cleaning up old missteps and mistakes.
