http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/world/asia/21china.html

“The bureau’s computers, however, are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006 government report.”

It’s an unusual number, but I’m guessing it can really handle 32,768 (2^15) and 516 of them have been reserved. Which, to me, suggests that they also could have planned for 65,536 (2^16) characters and had plenty of room.

So, to me, this looks like a case of thoughtless programming stealing people’s rightful names.

This is currently an issue with people with Arabic names, too. I knew a guy named Hazem — which is pronounced just like it looks, like “Racist tendencies? Betty Brown has ‘em — but was still pressured/forced to use the name “Moe” at his workplace. Many of his friends went by silly, “all-American” names like Bob, Bill, Joe, etc.

I always though of “the melting pot” as assimilation. It’s a bad metaphor, because when you think of it, when you melt something, it’s original property is changed. I think this is a perfect example of the melting pot mentality. Immigrants come and are expected to be part of the homogeneous group. They are expected to “act American” for the comfort of everyone else, instead of incorporating the American identity, whatever that may be, into their own.

As someone who can probably count on one hand the number of times his (Italian) last name was pronounced properly on the first try, I disagree…

Word. My last name is German (a whole whopping 5 letters long, too!) and I’m constantly astonished at how many ways people find to mispronounce and misspell it. I’d change to a name like “Ko” in a heartbeat.

There’s stuff like “your citizens” and “it will work for us” and “the Americans” which reveals that she thinks that Asian-Americans, especially immigrants with funny names, are in some sense not “real” Americans like herself.

Speaking to Ramey Ko, she says, “I see a need here for young people like you, who are obviously very bright, to come up with something that would work for you, and then let us see if it will work for us,” which sounds both well-meaning and slightly racist to my ears.

But the uproar over this has been a bit much. She was musing about how to solve the problem of Asian voters having difficulties at the poll station, and she explicitly said “I’m not talking about changing your name, I’m talking about the transliteration.”

She wasn’t talking about changing their names, only the transliteration into the latin alphabet. There isn’t a standard system and apparently it’s confusing. The witness himself actually brought up the issue as an obstacle for the asian community in voting.

of course the implication of “you and your citizens” is still pretty bad…

“One suggestion off the top of my head would be some type of provision addressing the problem with names. That’s actually one of the most frequently noted problems that happened in the 2008 election, which is the problem with a lot of voters having problems because their names didn’t match.”

Sure, let’s have them all change their names like Native Americans were forced to in schools back in the day, and like the African slaves who were forced to when they were brought here.

I think she just needs to learn how to read (names).

I do think however that Chinese-American citizens (in fact, all citizens) need to make doubly sure that their name is stated the same way in all official documentation. My last name is fairly common, but has multiple spellings. I often find errors, fortunately, none so far in critical documentation like driver’s license, passport, etc.

“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?”

She said that to an American citizen named Ramsey Ko. Real hard to read and pronounce, huh? And “you and your citizens?” What the hell does that mean? Sounds like Brown finds English to be a rather difficult language.

Sure, she’s old, white, and Southern, but she is trying to understand.
Southern people often think of those in the next *county* as not as authentic as they themselves are–that doesn’t mean they hate them, or denigrate them.

Plus, she is not talking about “easier to deal with” in everyday life, but in a specific bureaucratic situation.

Imagine it this way…someone complaining about black women naming their children x, and some white woman saying “You really need to think about changing it, AMERICANS are having a hard time pronouncing it.” Its the same idea.