In this new post racial America

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Representative Betty Brown Doesn’t “Want to Learn Chinese” to Say Your Name

Racialicious breaks it down

The Houston Chronicle notes:

“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?”

In reading over this article, three things jumped to mind:
Issue One: Problem was, most of these people were already using two names:

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.

Issue Two: Ko, brought up people of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent. They all got lumped into “Chinese” when she gave her answer.

http://www.racialicious.com/2009/04/10/representative-betty-brown-doesnt-want-to-learn-chinese-to-say-your-name/#comments">MORE

You all KNOW what she had to say on the matter of course?

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.

As usual.