Texas lawmaker suggests Asians adopt easier names | Front page | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
Quote:
AUSTIN — A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”
The comments caused the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday to demand an apology from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell. But a spokesman for Brown said her comments were only an attempt to overcome problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes.
The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.
Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations.
Easier for voting?
Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.
“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.
Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”
Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie said Republicans are trying to suppress votes with a partisan identification bill and said Brown “is adding insult to injury with her disrespectful comments.”
Brown spokesman Jordan Berry said Brown was not making a racially motivated comment but was trying to resolve an identification problem.
Berry said Democrats are trying to blow Brown’s comments out of proportion because polls show most voters support requiring identification for voting. Berry said the Democrats are using racial rhetoric to inflame partisan feelings against the bill.
“They want this to just be about race,” Berry said
|
Reminds me of the old joke, what do you call someone who only speaks one language? American. Forget speaking other languages, why the hell should we have to try to pronounce foreign names? This is America, dammit.
I understand having trouble with foreign names, and I am admittedly terrible at understanding foreign accents. I know plenty of immigrants and first-generation Americans, many Asian, who choose to go by anglicized names, and asking them to change their legal names is just asking to leave their culture and identity at the door since they're Americans now. Without full context, I'll give Rep. Brown the benefit of the doubt and assume that she specified Chinese because she was talking to a representative of the Org. for Chinese Americans rather than calling all Asians Chinese. Maybe if people opened their minds a bit, they'd learn something and expand their way of thinking. This seems like the next step up from "Speak English or get out."