Oriental is a bad word

I went to a College in New York City

Earlier this year and saw the list on the wall

of all the words that are not allowed to be said

anywhere on the campus.

these were not the usual four-letter words

that were forbidden in Catholic school

but ordinary common everyday words

 that people apparently use without thinking

but have since been blacklisted (racist term)

and therefore, must be racist

the one that really surprise me was the word Oriental

we're not allowed to use that word anymore

part of the litany of terms

colleges claim as colonial,

 one more word to the growing list of forbidden text

some enlightened professor somewhere

has declared as offensive

 building on the color divide

nothing so obvious is Jim Crow laws

yet obvious equally odious

to the over-sensitive new generation

who can’t possibly tolerate as society

that permits free speech

we all can drink from the same water fountain

use the same bathroom

sit up front in the bus

but we can't say what we want to say

or think what we want to think

Oriental or white

Yet when it comes to admission at this college

Orientals are even less welcome than whites

perhaps they do too well in college entrance exams

and therefore, not entitled to get a language lesson

from these arbitrators of good and bad words,

who actually believe these are signs of racism

and assume anyone who says any of them

must be a secret white supremist.