Despite mounting political pressure from Democrats, a North Texas legislator says that simplifying Asian names is a worthwhile endeavour.
Controversial?
The Houston Chronicle reports that Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell, is defending her calls to simplify some Asian names for practical reasons:
Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.
“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.
Many people of Asian-American descent have a legal transliterated name and a so-called English name. Thus, voting is not always simple.
Liberal Democrats, however, are outraged. The Texas Democratic Party is demanding an apology. But for some Asian-Americans that feels like the least of their worries.
In
The Price of Admission, Daniel Golden, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard graduate points out:
Given free rein...most elite universities have maintained a triple standard in college admissions, setting the bar highest for Asians, next for whites, and lowest for black and Hispanics. According to a 2004 study by three Princeton researchers, an Asian American needs to score 50 points higher on the SAT than other applicants just to have the same chance of admission to an elite university.
The education issue has hit Asian-Americans especially hard. Progressive universities, on the one hand, maintain that cultural identities are important, but on the other, Korean students, for example, face discrimination, leading some to argue that simplifying names will bring some hidden benefits.
Meanwhile,
The Guardian, at the University of California, San Diego, reports that officials can’t escape the issue either:
The [state legislative] panel also addressed concerns over the changes in admission demographics that could be brought on by the new standards, an issue that first arose after a number of Asian-American organizations expressed concern over the university’s projection that the modified admissions standards could result in up to 7 percent fewer Asian admits due to the elimination of the SAT subject tests. Research has shown that Asian Americans tend to perform well on these exams. The same estimates found that admission of white applicants could rise by as much as 10 percent under the new policy, while that of black and Chicano applicants would barely increase.
So, what’s in an Asian name?
