This work is a biography of Victorio Acosta Velasco, a Filipino-born journalist and labor leader who immigrated to the United States in 1924. At this time, thousands of young Filipinos were coming to America to further their education, find opportunity, and realize the idealism the U.S. was rumored to offer. Upon arriving in Seattle, however, Velasco learned that the 'American Dream' hardly applied to dark-skinned immigrants. Devalued by the workforce and spurned by white women, the disillusioned Velasco became involved in Filipino activities, but never conceded his place in American society. Amongst other achievements, he published poetry in nearly a dozen mainstream anthologies on American literature. Ultimately, by the end of the Second World War, Velasco had learned to approach his Caucasian relationships with more circumspection, and also began to experience intra-ethnic conflicts with other Filipinos. This book seeks to counter the negative, one-dimensional portraits of Asian men in popular media, and informs its readers of an authentic and challenging Filipino-American experience.

The United States boasts scores of organizations that offer crucial representation for groups that are marginalized in national politics, from women to racial minorities to the poor. Here, in the first systematic study of these organizations, Dara Z. Strolovitch explores the challenges and opportunities they face in the new millennium, as waning legal discrimination coincides with increasing political and economic inequalities within the populations they represent. Drawing on rich new data from a survey of 286 organizations and interviews with forty officials, Strolovitch finds that groups too often prioritize the interests of their most advantaged members: male rather than female racial minorities, for example, or affluent rather than poor women. But Strolovitch also finds that many organizations try to remedy this inequity, and she concludes by distilling their best practices into a set of principles that she calls affirmative advocacy—a form of representation that aims to overcome the entrenched but often subtle biases against people at the intersection of more than one marginalized group. Intelligently combining political theory with sophisticated empirical methods, Affirmative Advocacy will be required reading for students and scholars of American politics.

A political directory of over 4,000 Asian Pacific American elected and major appointed officials at the federal, state, and local levels for 39 states, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and Virgin Islands. Includes essays by prominent political scientists, commentators, and community-based electoral activists; voter exit polls; census data, and policy research reports. This issue is dedicated to the late Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.

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