A comment by a Texas lawmaker asking the Asian Americans to change their names was condemned by several community organizations. 

The Democratic Party too asked for an apology from State Representative Betty Brown of Terrell, near Dallas, a Republican. But she declined it and defended the comment saying that it was not racially motivated but was an attempt to solve problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes.

Brown, a five time representative made the comment during a testimony by Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans about the problems faced by Asians during voting. He said people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent face problems because their legal transliterated name is often different from their common English name used on their driver's license and on school registrations.

Brown then commented: '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?'

Later she said, 'can't you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier both for you and for the people who are poll workers if there were some means by which you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that's easier for the Americans to deal with?'

'Besides the suggestion to change names, there are plenty of hints that she doesn't think Asian Americans are American citizens. How otherwise is one to understand "your citizens" and "easier for Americans to deal with," SB Woo, former lieutenant governor of Delaware and founder of 80-20, a civil rights organization for the Asians asked.

'For those of us who think that the "perpetual foreigner" image against us is attenuating, think again! If your compatriots think you are a foreigner, can you get good jobs,' he asked.

He told a journalist who emailed for a comment that 'there is not a thing wrong with people voluntarily adopting names to make things more convenient for themselves and others. What is wrong is for others to suggest that. If I say why don't you adopt a Chinese name in emailing me to make things easier for me, you might think me uncivil, to say the least, and perhaps uneducated and arrogant to the point of being barbaric.'

State Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie said Republicans were trying to suppress voters and said Brown was adding insult to injury with her disrespectful comments.

Brown's spokesman said Democrats were trying to blow Brown's comments out of proportion.