Ok, I just saw this shit from one of my friends on Facebook:
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.
Umm, excuse me, but aren’t those people of Asian descent voting in the US also “Americans”? Maybe us “Americans” need to learn how to friggin’ deal with names that aren’t Anglo-Saxon, huh?
This just kills me:
“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?
Oh come on. You don’t have to “learn Chinese” in order to “deal with” an Asian name (which I take to mean “recognize and pronounce correctly an Asian name”). Oh, and nice reducing all Asians to Chinese. And for the record, English is just as difficult a language to learn as Chinese. So, please take your racist bs disguised as concern elsewhere, thank you very much.
Being an Asian myself, I find that to be incredibly ignorant (not your post, Kevin). This problem goes far beyond just making it easier to deal with during polls to just a system where when growing up, people that stand out of the crowd are often singled out. I can distinctly recall elementary school and always being the odd one out for being the “Asian kid.”
The problem goes to a root of racism being thoroughly bred in a person’s entire life: I can guarantee you that Mr. Brown was one of the children in elementary school who would point and single out the “Asian kid.”
Beyond just that, I think that our society (our American society) needs to learn to open up to differences. It doesn’t matter what race a person is: any Anglo-Saxon name can be terribly difficult as well.
(Also, it’s not like we [Asian-Americans] go to polls and sign with our Asian characters, be it Chinese, Kanji, or whatever. Phonetics people, learn it.)
My 2 cents.
Mrs. Brown**
My apologies, I was rushed and at work, haha.
That’s what I’m saying. How freakin’ hard is it, really, to figure out an Asian name. Geesh.
Say What?! This is just beyond belief. And the fact that Brown and her folks see nothing wrong with her “request” is even more unbelievable…but typical.
This is beyond belief. It almost seems like it has to be a joke.
I wish I knew what to say here. This is so unbelievable that I’m truly speechless. It’s just that effing ridiculous.
*shakes head*
Yeah, I’m speechless too. In English AND Chinese.