Too hard to find your name on the voting rolls? Do ‘American’ poll workers have a difficult time understanding how to spell your ethnic name? Time to change that name – or so Rep. Betty Brown suggests…
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 exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.“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?†[chron]
Ohnoshedin’t. She’s not even suggesting that people take on easier to pronounce nicknames, but legally changing names to make it easier for immigrant Americans to have access to voting. For realz?
Watch Ramey Ko duke it out with Ms. Brown in the above video. This is a very important voting rights issue up for debate – Texas Senate is debating a Voter ID legislation currently and asking for identification at the polls on Election Day is intimidating to APIA voters. Ko was arguing that asking for a form of identification to vote is difficult when dealing with this population. Studies show that “Asian American voters in states that required a form of ID were 8.5% less likely to vote compared to Asian American voters in states without voter identification requirements.”
See what your Betty Brown approved name would be on the Betty Brown Name Generator. You can just call me, Tiffani “Americana” Brown, from here on out. At least I’m still ‘Brown’.
As my Finnish-American friend just said, “This lady would probably crap if she had to try pronouncing Norwegian and Eastern European names.”
Taz, Although the request to Anglicize Asian names sounds ridiculous, the conversation in that clip brings up a much more complex issue. If names aren’t exact, the likelihood of duplicate or similar names could be overwhelming. Wouldn’t it be easier to check ID numbers, scan driver’s licenses, etc? I mean, shouldn’t polling places be at least as technologically advanced as a liquor store?
Easier for “Americans” to deal with? She should have just qualified them as “real Americans,” like some on the political right have a tendency to do. Also, doesn’t the esteemed and learned legislator know that all those people with the funny names who are voting are Americans, too?
Billy-Ray “Cracker Barrel” Brown signing in.
not to defend ms brown, but judging by her appearance, she is at least in her late fifties. her questions, though uncomfortable were generally politely phrased. i am of the belief that it is best if people are plainspoken rather than pad language into bafflegab. folks might remember the herouxville episode in which the village council explicitly warned that they do not permit women to be stoned in public (like the muslims do). it led to an interesting discourse with some ladies who took the trouble to sit down with the council and explain that their religious traditions have little to do with what the neanderthals have been doing in their name.
a friend had fwded me that clip earlier. ironically, his granddad’s name was mangled by the immigration officer because the umlaut got interpreted as the dots with the two ‘i’s. it’s funny now, but the guy grimaces to think this disconnected him from his relatives back home in the european pind.
there is a legitimate problem especially with asian names where the use of non-roman characters in identification documents leads to a wide variety in interpretation. sometimes there is the use of hyphens or apostrophes – and this is open to abuse. i think the APIA is very correct to take this up because the risk of disenfranchisement is very very real. it would be very easy to take the official stance and reject a person from the polls by saying that we do not have your name in the register.
Among indians, especially where the use of patronymics is very common, there is the same risk. For example – Suchithra, the daughter of Sivan, would have her name as S. Suchithra in the Indian passport (somebody correct me if i am off). but she would prefer to be named Suchithra Sivan when in America. Are S. suchithra and Suchithra Sivan the same person? the discrepancy in the name might be enough to reject her at the polling booth – if she is at a certain age and does not have adequate grasp over english and does not have other documentation to prove her right to vote. in addition to the naming issue, the officer is very likely to throw up her hands and say, “all you people look the same. how the heck do i know who is who?” somebody like betty brown would readily do so.
anyhow. i would be curious to hear the individual experiences from desis. hope to hear your stories.
random aside for you to choo over: there’s a little kerfuffle in canada about the right for burqaa wearers to vote without showing their face at the polling station.
koofia: random aside for you to choo over: there’s a little kerfuffle in canada about the right for burqaa wearers to vote without showing their face at the polling station.
fascinating! couldn’t the burkha-voters just show their face to a female polling official for identification?
This has been making me shake my head since yesterday. But watching the video, I think the news story (and resultant flap) is being a little unfair to Rep. Brown. She clarifies herself immediately after where she’s quoted, realizing that she may be misunderstood, by stating very clearly that she doesn’t mean that people should change their names, but rather to adopt a standard of transliteration of Chinese names to make it easier to match names on voter rolls with ID documents.
This is something similar to what happened with Al Gore at the Love Canal incident – he was misquoted and crucified in the media because of it. In this case Rep. Brown has been not completely quoted and I’m sure will not come out of this well. And what really worries me is the folks who will inevitably come forward and say “yeah! those asians should have american names!” which is not at all even close to what I think, having watched this, Rep. Brown meant to say.
Oh, but her comment on “Americans” being able to identify voters is still eye-roll worthy. HELLO, IF YOU ARE VOTING YOU ARE AN AMERICAN.
This brings a very important point. How do expecting parents of south asian origin decide names. I can think of so many south asian names that can be brunt of jokes and bullying in school….akhil (a-kill), khushi (cushy),ashfaq (obvious), hardik (again obvious) Pia (pee-ya), Tia (Tee-ya) etc etc etc.
How can desi parents-to-be find out in advance all the connotation a name can lead to before deciding what to name their kid ?
The comment about the names isn’t as offensive in itself as the phrases “easier for Americans to deal with� and “your citizens”…
Yeah! what an insult to Americans who can pronounce names other than Smith and Brown, Busch and McDonalds. Rep. Betty’s thinking is archaic on many levels.
@ zee – the best thing would be to commandeer a focus group of young school-going abds. Or check out urbandictionary.com. But seeing as you would have to research names on their parts rather than in their sums in the latter method, go with the first. And maybe write a guest post at SM to share your findings 😉
Taz,
Let your comprehension skills get the better of your innate racial outrage for once. Please! You are too predictable, as are some of this site’s regular commentators who take the bait. When you insinuate that Cindy McCain is being racist in handling her adopted daughter’s exposure or when you accuse Ms Brown of something that she evidently isn’t as seen in this video, you are undermining the cause of genuine racial justice.
Bobby Jindal can be made chairman of how to assimilate your name and culture while wearing clothes befitting an FOB from the 80s. Though in all seriousness, when you have a name that can be modified as Peee_yooo, can you blame him.
OK all kidding aside, while I find the lady’s suggestions silly, I don’t know if it is racist. Many white immigrants have changed their names in the 20th century. One has to thank Arnold Swarzenegger for having the guts(and the many muscles) to stand by his name.
I am glad I have an easy name to pronounce. The only concession I make is I will occasionally include a phonetic spelling as a guide so people will know it’s pronounced Praveen and not Pra- vin. But once people pronounce it right, they never mispronounce it.
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is glad Ms Brown left Polish Americans off her list.
the tiny media snippets made it seem a lot more offensive than it seems to be embedded in context.
also, i think we need to age-normalize for these “american” comments. for people in their late 50s asians will always be perceived as foreign; they didn’t grow up in a nation where asian americans were their peers in school and such. the more sensitive and aware will be careful to modulate, but these sort of slip-ups will always occur because this is just how they formed categories of american and non-american. many of our parents are american citizens, and have lived in the united states for half their lives (or, most of their adult life) and regularly talk about “americans” with the implication that their own group is excluded and that aren’t of the class “americans,” because they didn’t grow up as americans.
people regularly offer that you need to be subtle & nuanced when interpreting different cultures and not just run off on the face value. that applies to “hard working americans” too. not everyone went to high school in san jose in the 1990s.
It’s not archaic. People have issues pronouncing unusual names all the time. No matter where they are from. Unusual means names that they are not used to or normally exposed to.
I think the elephant in the room that is not being noticed on both this and the thread about H1Bs is the fact that people all around the world are clammoring to live and work in a nation that has at it’s very inception the concept of crushing an indigenous (colored) culture and it’s peoples, as well as importing other colored people for the use of their free labor in order to build said nation.
No one is willing to remain silent on those issues, yet we are willing to remain silent on our own participation in a nation with such a problematic human rights history.
Have any of us bothered to question our parents and grand-parents ethics in this regard? Have any of us taken them to task for clammoring to come here and milk the “American dream” which was all founded, built and based upon these human rights violations?
Are they not complicit somehow?
Why do we let them off the hook?
Why do we let them off the hook?
human history is one of savagery. the american example is exceptional because of the crass contradiction between its generalized ideals and the numerous specific breaches. america was also founded as a protestant nation (see the early president’s suspicions of “popery” and the republican party’s origins as the “anti-romish” faction). should catholics wonder why live in the united states? not really, because this isn’t an anti-catholic country anymore in the way it was. similarly, a nation where the majority consensus that black people were not by definition citizens (because this was a white nation) has a black president.
what incredible nation should people immigrate too? japan, where koreans are still treated like how blacks were treated in the 1950s? how about the muslim gulf, where dubai is arguably built on brown slave labor? europe, where attitudes toward race are arguably less friendly to colored people than the states?
i think this is the more relevant issue. i just finished watching this video and it seems like there are so many easier ways to solve this problem. for one thing, why do people have to carry their naturalization papers – would not a passport suffice (i am assuming that most asian americans have one). but beyond that, “roy”‘s point re ID numbers is better – numbers are pretty hard to mess up and if you’;re voting (even in local elections where sometimes non-citizens are allowed to) you would still need to have a SS card, which would be the easiest thing. esp. given mr. ko’s explanation as to how even transliteration is an issue because of various academic systems for each language.
on a larger note, i think it sucks that people (feel they) have to westernize their names to make it easier for themselves (by making it easier for others) but i do understand it. my dad wanted to name one of his children a quite “rural” tamil name – he got vetoed on the the tamil bit completely for my sister, but thankfully for me, my mother intervened for a shorter name. still, 95% of the people i meet completely mangle it. although you get used to it, it’s terrible to spend 30 years of your life not only having your name mispronounced, but having people actually get upset with you for having a name that they are either incapable of or too indifferent to attempt to pronounce properly.
and btw, it was mr. ko who made the first distinction between asians and americans (in his example of his cousin choosing an american name). i know that this leans more towards the argument of american/western-origin names vs chinese-origin names, but perhaps she took it as his or the asian communities mindset of setting themselves apart. although, she did throw out the “you and your citizens” bit right before that…
How about no immigration at all? Just staying in one’s own place and being the best you can be – there. And contribute to nation building there – in one’s own place.
I don’t get why so many desis were so eager at one time (our parents and grandparents generations) and are STILL eager like crazy to immigrate out of the Desh.
Sure, they would have had to live with alot less (junk) and on alot less, but guess what? It’s been done and it is being done. Why this leave the Desh craze?
sepiaaahhh, why is it just the immigrant generations that you are holding accountable? even though you were (assumedly) born here, why do you not apply the same questioning to yourself? clearly, you feel strongly re america’s human rights. but if you start questioning the benefits derived from the US by people who immigrated here, should you also not question the people who also receive such benefits but were born here? if your issue is with “milking the american dream” while US has terrible human rights policies, i don’t see that it makes much of a difference whether you are hereas an immigrant or a native-born.
and in any case, many people are fine with the states’ human rights record, so if anything, the argument could be made that you, as someone who has an identified contention with that record, should be the one who should be taken to task.
I do question myself. And I question all desis who blah blah on and on and on about white people, while living in this country and not blah blahing about themselves or their families who CHOSE to come here and milk it.
It’s hypocritical. If they were sincere they would question their parents or grandparents motivations for coming here in the first place. But that’s a sacred cow and must not be questioned.
I was born here and had no choice in the matter. Would I have preferred to be born somewhere else?
Probably.
But my grandparents DID have a choice. The responsibility lies with them.
In more cases than not it’s just because they wanted to make more money and consume more products than they could in the Desh.
my basic point was that everybody has a choice, including you. you may not have had a choice in where you born, but you do have a choice in where you choose to live once you reach a certain age. if you are that age currently, then your choosing to continue to live here is open to question and is equally as hypocritical as you think the older generations are.
also, we were born in an age where human rights were already instilled in the dialoigue of cultures. this was not so at the time many of our parents/grandparents came over.
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blockquote>But my grandparents DID have a choice. The responsibility lies with them.
In more cases than not it’s just because they wanted to make more money and consume more products than they could in the Desh.
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blockquote>
Or may be you desis of your grandparents generations didn’t want their kids to fight the bitter fight of existence and making a living and or a name, and wanted give them more oportunities, without having to struggle daily for the basic necessities.
Yikes…my comment should have been like this:
Sepiaaahhh said: “But my grandparents DID have a choice. The responsibility lies with them.
In more cases than not it’s just because they wanted to make more money and consume more products than they could in the Desh. “
I said: Or may be you desis of your grandparents generations didn’t want their kids to fight the bitter fight of existence and making a living and or a name, and wanted give them more oportunities, without having to struggle daily for the basic necessities.
(I cannot get the ‘quote’ thing to work in the new design)
Not very likely. If we take an honest look at the lives our grandparents or parents lived in the Desh, they were not scouraging garbage cans to find food to eat or prostituting their bodies out in order to feed their babies. They may have been poor compared to what they are now, but they were not poor compared to the REAL poor and homeless of the Desh.
They often came from property owning families, property that was to be handed down to them.
They all had a place to live, a role in the extended family.
Their excuses are bollocks.
And AK, I do happen to spend the majority of my time NOT in the USA. I return here only because my family demands to see me.
Billy-Ray “WalMart” Brown. Low prices everyday!
I wonder if she said the same to Zbigniew Brzezinski
Right. Having trouble pronouncing names isn’t archaic. What is archaic is the institutionalized idea that one should change her name to accomodate those who have issues pronouncing it. If these names have no opportunity to enter the everyday language then they’ll always be “unusual”.
I thought the point was already made that she is not asking for a complete change of name but just a more simple standarized spelling for the original name. I never understood what people had against pheonetics.
Supreeya instead of Surpriya. Like that.
But at any rate, what do this people expect when they immigrate here? They are immigrating here to make more money so they can buy more products. What’s a little change in the way they spell their name? Heck, the American dream is so great, they should be bending over backwards to CHANGE their names if they have to. And I bet if that if the law was that they had to change their names to Jack and Jill in order to make more money and buy more products, they would! I bet you ANYTHING that if the US implemented such a law tomorrow, that there would be no decline in the amount of foreigners clammoring to immigrate here, make more money and buy more products.
Let’s not flatter ourselves and pretend that we have any noble cause in immigrating to USA.
“They may have been poor compared to what they are now, but they were not poor compared to the REAL poor and homeless of the Desh.”
….and they must have seen unemployed youths in their extended family getting beaten trying to get a college admission, and then a job (if college became a reality) and then a promotion (if job became a reality). Struggle in life comes in all forms. Every person struggles in life in one way or other, even in US. But the availability of much better infrastructure (roads, clean water) in developed countries makes people struggle at a different level for different things.
I suggest you put you kids in school in India, see them fight it out with classes that are 10 times the size in US, then cry it out trying to get admission in college (unless awfully crazy smart and lucky to get in IIT or some other govt college with limited seats) and then look for job. You will understand how your grandparents felt. Maybe you can go back to your ancestral desh for making up for the sins of your grandparents.
That’s exactly what I’m doing!
Back to the point, I hope everyone takes a few minutes out of their day to write an email or call Rep Brown’s office to express their concern over her statements. Let’s use this issue to further the dialogue on positive race-relations in the US. that transcends nationality differences, because labeling and stereotyping is ridiculous and hurtful.
Sepiaaahhh– whether or not any of us chose to come to the USA or choose to continue to live in this country, and despite our ancestors’ reasons for immigration, we can ALL work to be better, more socially conscious people whatever Desh we are living in. Any Desh is nothing more than the society that constitutes the people, not the location of the land.
Peace and regards,
Everyone loves a Phoenician.
Long Long instead of Lang Lang! Please, seepeeooh(it’s easier to say) let’s not dumb everything down – even if we’re all money hungry, thingy lovers.
sepiaaahhh = Dr. Amnonymous????? a ha!
I was just listening to the radio this morning where they were interviewing Minal Hajratwala about her book “Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents,” and one of the first things she covered was about her father Bhupendra who immigrated to this country and was told by a potential employer “your name sounds complicated I think I’ll call you Bob”. His response was when I learned the English language one of the words I struggled over was refrigerator, I think you can manage Bhupendra.
I think this was over blown. The video was rather boring. It was all polite and calm and respectful. I don’t think the name issue is racial since European immigrants changed their names or had their names changed for them by immigration who wrote down their names in places like Ellis Island. Some other Indian names are hard to pronounce even by other Indians. Asians can find other different Asian names hard to pronounce, Africans may find Eastern European names hard to pronounce, etc…any sort of permutation.
People come here for various reasons – social, political, economical. Opportunity they did not have back home.
sunil @34: “His response was when I learned the English language one of the words I struggled over was refrigerator, I think you can manage Bhupendra”
Excellent response. My peeve is that many ‘real americans’ will take the time to learn and say long and complicated french names such as “Jean-Francois” but will grumble about desi names half the size. One person with the longest name I know wanted to know if I can use a nickname.
Sepiaaahhh @ 31: Good for you.
Clearly overblown. It’s not about name change but name SPELLING. Where is the issue here?
Privileged liberal brats consuming more and more products daily crying discrimination.
Ha!
Joke of the millenium.
Next thing you know Asians will be claiming to be “slave” for the system, when in actuality, we are slaves TO the system.
sepiaaahhh – glad to hear you practise what you preach 😉 but i do think zee has a point – it’s hard to stay in a country where you know you opportunities are limited when you know you could have limitless opportiunities elsewhere. and it’s hard to say what one should or should not do in that situation unless you’ve actually been there. and even then – what works for one person may not be what works for others. it’s also easy to say that their reasons are mere excuses if you’re not willing to go back to india yourself and be content in the exact same situations from which they came. and not everybody who came to this country had the same situations back home – you may be able to speak for your family and those whom you personally know, but do not think that everybody was in the same boat.
what zee said – that’s exactly why my parents came here, and i have no qualms in saying that they have made my life easier but also that they have given me opportunities that i otherwise might never have had, esp. judging from the lives of my cousisn back home. it’s not that my life is perfect, but my parents really did sacrifice a lot and, at the very least, i am grateful for it.
Speaking of hard-to-pronounce names:) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va_khUXaJz4
Has anyone’s parents come from this type of background in the Desh?
Doubtful. For those who really need oppurtunity, they can never make it out of India.
My family came from a modest background, but they owned some property and never ran out of their rice-dahl supply. But they wanted more than just a modest but healthy life in India. They wanted PRODUCTS.
They wanted the desi status that comes with “living abroad”.
It’s desi greed and ego. That’s the bottom line.
But what of opportunities for women? Are they the same in India as in the U.S.?
Sepiaaahhh@ 40: Nobody denies that these people need more opportunities than they have. Why don’t you contribute and work for some of the NGOs funded and manned by the many ‘greedy desis’ ?
Seriously, if you are moving back to India AND raising back your family, please report/think back after ten years (I really mean in). I Although, you will have the unfair advantage of safety net of US fall back to. If you can remove the net, go back to your modest means your parents came from, then only you can truly feel it.
Sepiaaahhh does have alot of good points. One thing that always bothered me have been desi’s who move to the west, but badmouth there new homeland and culture and talk about how things are much better in there homeland.
For what my grandmother and other desi women of her generation do – yes.
They cook and wait on the men in their family and obsess over arranging marriages for the youth.
I would say she would’ve had even greater oppurtunities in the Desh to carry on in such a medieval manner.
The only added oppurtunities for her here have been the many different kinds of products she can now buy.
For all of you who are predicting my failure with “going native” in what would have been my “homeland”, I’m quite comfortable living simply and eating the same thing everyday.
Starbucks and Neiman Marcus will not be missed.
I don’t get why so many desis were so eager at one time (our parents and grandparents generations) and are STILL eager like crazy to immigrate out of the Desh.
that’s changing. as for your points, i guess they’re right, but they seem so self-evident (yeah, people came here for the $$$). then again, i don’t hang out with the types who complain about the Oppression of The White Man all the time, so perhaps my perspective is skewed.
but badmouth there new homeland and culture and talk about how things are much better in there homeland.
sure, but this applies to within the united states too. how many times have you heard someone who moves from “place A” to “place B” for jobs complain about their knew locale and how it isn’t nearly as dope as their old locale? personally though, there is one thing that bothers me, and some white people go along with it, and it’s the idea that “white people have no culture.”
Poppycock. Since when do you or other people age-normalize for older Muslims or desis whose views are out of place in 21st century America? If she is in her late 50s, then she was in her twenties when Asian immigration to the US took off. She has spent most of her life with Asian people around her. She is from Terrell, Texas. Indeed a small town, but part of the DFW metroplex. There are millions of Asians and other immigrants within minutes of her home, including one of the largest Desi populations in the country. I look the other way when offensive comments are made by 90 year old senior citizens, but not for an elected official much less one in her late 50s.
Sepiaaahhh – you prolly underwent/undergo the issues many ABDs do. Remember that the Desh you refer to was never one defined place with well defined groups of people. Do you know that the Adivasis that form the poorest of the Indian population is basically a displaced group? They have been displaced for centuries and it continues to this day. Our ancestors were the ones displacing them – so don’t imagine that there was no suppression of weaker groups in India. This sort of thing has been going on from time immemorial. The western Europeans simply excelled at this in the last few centuries and are made to feel guilty about it. Africans, Desis, Asians etc. just like ridicule them while at the same time enjoying (milking) the comforts of this nation.
By the way, is the name thing a brown issue? I think not – all the desi travel documents have the names in English. No transliteration involved.
“Starbucks and Neiman Marcus will not be missed”
Dude….if some first gen desi is buying from “Neiman Marcus”, I can bet then that person can no way hail from a ‘modest background’. You have to review your definition of ‘modest background’ from India then. Upon seeing the prices listed a first gen of ‘modest background’ will convert it to desi money and say ‘yikes’, because that will probably add up to the plane fair amount or the money he/she pays for nieces school tuition (which her sister in India can’t afford).
I am sure you can live simply in India, but will you be able to give the same opportunities to your child that you got in US ?
Suki: People who come here and bad-mouth are probably doing it from nostalgia. I, for one, love US for the freedom I have here which is not possible as a woman in India and the innovation and like most people I have met here compared to that in India. On the other hand I sorely miss my aging family, and hope to go back just for them.
That’s why I don’t criticise the WHITE MAN for anything. I criticise the immigrants who do, though, because they are hypocrits of the highest order.
Yep, and that’s why no desi should’ve ever immigrated out. Everyone should have stayed put and helped to right the wrongs of their own native place instead of clammoring to make more money and buy more products in a foreign land.
I’m 3rd or 2.5 gen. My grandparents lived frugally in the beginning, but after saving and coming into big bucks, it was ON! My parents – totally status driven. My siblings – eating out everday – cafes, bars, nightclubs, you name it. Product. Product. Product.
As far as oppurtunities for women that are available in the US that are not in India – none of the women in my family have taken good advantage of that. My grandmother continues to dote on all males members as if they were gods. I have an aunt who, despite good education and solid profession has stayed in a loveless marriage for decades, the list goes on.
The real oppurtunities to break out of medieval mentality that this country could have provided for them, they did not take to because it was in opposition to the backwards aspects of Indian culture that they wanted to hold on to – but the product consuming aspects of US they were more than happy to oblige.
Go figure.
I on the otherhand choose to shun the products but work for real change in what would have been my homeland.