Vietnamese-American lawmaker accuses Washington state senators of mocking name

Washington state Sen. Joe Nguyen (D) accused his colleagues of mocking the spelling of his name on the state Senate floor.

Nguyen, who is Vietnamese-American and a first-year Washington state senator, told local outlet The Stranger in a profile published Tuesday that his colleagues “make racist comments unknowingly on a regular basis.”

Nguyen told the newspaper that after he passed his first bill last year, Republican state senators Phil Fortunato and Minority Leader Mark Schoesler poked fun at his surname.{mosads}

The Democrat told the outlet that Fortunato said, “I’d like to know how you get ‘win’ out of Nguyen.” Schoesler reportedly said “I’m going to work really hard to learn to spell and pronounce member ‘new guy’s’ name, and hopefully by the end of this session he’ll be able to spell and pronounce my name,” according to the paper.

“It’s exhausting, man,” Nguyen told The Stranger. “When people ridicule my name on the Senate floor. When they make racist comments unknowingly on a regular basis. When I have to explain institutional racism to members of my own caucus sometimes. It gets exhausting.”

The Hill has reached out to Fortunato and Schoesler for comment.

Nguyen told HuffPost in a separate interview that his last name is the most common in the state’s most populous county, and said he’d has similar experiences since elementary school.

“The reason why it’s so frustrating and dehumanizing is that if they don’t even respect you enough to learn how to say your name, they won’t respect your values and respect your ideals,” Nguyen told HuffPost. “When we had it on the Senate floor … it kinda just showed their thought process.”

Nguyen said that since the incident, he has discussed the pronunciation of his name with colleagues in the Senate to try to address the issue.

“Any time you minimize somebody’s existence whether it’s through their name or other means, it’s detrimental for the community. … It’s one of those things where it’s so fundamental to the core that if you don’t take the time to learn somebody’s name, it doesn’t give me much faith that you’ll fight for that community as well,” he told the publication.