Some recent words from Rep. Betty Brown of Texas have got me thinking about American identity. In short, Brown made a remark suggesting that Asian-Americans consider changing their names to make things smoother on Election Day:
“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?”
There's a definite difference between hatred and ignorant misunderstanding. I'm hoping this was just ignorance. The use of the phrase "you and your citizens" strikes me as particularly unfortunate because (1) the person she was addressing at the time was named Ramey Ko -- not exactly a difficult name for pollworkers to grasp, even those educated in Texas public schools -- and (2) as "citizens" we're supposed to all belong to the same state and country.
I do understand that, for many immigrants, picking up an "Americanized" nickname makes everyday life and blending into the culture easier. But in the age of computers, it's not that hard for the government to track proper spellings and such. We stopped making up things to scribble by hand into the Ellis Island registry a long time ago. Brown's remark was just laughably rude.
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