Texas GOP State Rep. Asks Asians To Adopt Names “Easier For Americans To Deal With”

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Here’s a really interesting moment in state-level politics: A GOP state Representative in Texas, Betty Brown, asked a representative from a Chinese-American group if they could just adopt new names that would be “easier for Americans to deal with.”

The Houston Chronicle reports that during a committee hearing on a voter-identification bill, a representative from the Organization of Chinese Americans complained that there can be confusion because many Asian-Americans will have their legal, transliterated names as well as common English names that can appear on driver’s licenses and school registrations.

“Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers,” said Brown, “if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

Um, the difficulty as it was explained here is that many Asian-Americans do just exactly that — and that’s the problem when it comes to Voter ID.

The state Dems pounced on Brown’s comments, calling them “disrespectful.” Brown’s spokesman, meanwhile, accused the Dems of whipping up partisan feelings with racial rhetoric: “They want this to just be about race.”

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