U.S. Rep. Betty Brown of Texas thought she was being helpful by suggesting that Asian Americans to change their names so that it will be "easier for Americans to deal with."
All of this happened when Ramsey Ko of the Organization of Chinese American, a national civil-rights and advocacy organization, testified before the House Elections Committee saying that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent (among others) often have difficulty voting because their legal forms of identification often carry their transliterated name as well as a commonly used English name.
Congresswoman Brown went on to say that it would be too difficult to learn a foreign language such as Chinese so it would "behoove [Ko] and [Asian-American] citizens to adopt a name that [poll workers] could deal with more readily here."
Now imagine for a moment if this congresswoman asked Latinos in America to change their names for the convenience of other Americans. Or if we told President Barack Obama that his name was too difficult to pronounce so he should consider changing it to Barry O'Brien.
I wonder what Congresswoman Brown will say if she has to to go to China, India or even Germany for an international diplmatic convention.
This only shows how shallow some of us can be. And you will be surprised to find out how many Congresswoman Brown there are in this country.
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