I don’t even know where to start with this.
In case you can’t access the link, here’s the recap of the article.
A rep from the Organization of Chinese Americans spoke at a House testimony on voter registration about the difficulty some Asian Americans have during voting “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.”
Republican Betty Brown from Texas responded, “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?”
People called her out making racist, ignorant statements, and of course, her spokesman says this is just being blown out of proportion.
Okay. Let’s forget how messed up (and freaking racist) her statements are for a second and just enjoy how purely stupid this whole thing is.
Who are these Americans she’s referring to? The whole issue is on VOTING. You must be an American citizen to vote. Every last person in the Organization of Chinese AMERICANS is an American. When Brown suggests that Asian Americans “adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with” and refers to the OCA as “you [the rep] and your citizens,” she’s making a distinction between Chinese Americans and Americans.
Chinese Americans are Americans.
This is a bit tangential, but still relevant. Up until this year, I used to be wary of calling things racist. Especially as an Asian American Studies major, I didn’t want to be seen one of those people who see racism everywhere – from tv shows to textbooks to the bottom of my coffee mug. So I would use phrases like “poor lack of judgement” or “unfortunate choice of words” or “momentary lapses of sanity and reason.”
I’m done with that. This year, I’m calling them like I see it. Remember kids, “racist” is not a bad word, it just refers to bad people.