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On Tuesday April 07, 2009 Texas State Rep. Betty Brown said that Asian-Americans should change their names because they’re too hard to pronounce:
“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?” .<!--break-->Brown later told [Organization of Chinese Americans representative Ramey] 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?”
Brown has resisted calls to apologize. Her spokesman said that Democrats “want this to just be about race.”..<!--break-->Now as an Iranian-American my first impression of this was to take offense and get mad (who are you to tell me or anyone else to change their name; a fundamental basis of respect for one’s family and heritage, to make things “easier” for you.) furthermore many of you will agree as I do that her comments were racist and ignorant, however; my name and that of a million other people in Los Angeles is “Fred” which Stands for Farid and could stand for just to name a few: Farshad, farahad,farzan, faramarz, fereydoon, farboad and just about anything else that starts with the letter “F”.  ..... >>>