Introduction: Critical considerations

For many Filipinos today, the phrase "positivelynoFilipinos allowed" continues to resonate, a reminder of the anti-Filipino practices and sentiments the manong generation encountered at a particular historical moment in the United States. Displayed prominently on doors of hotels and other business establishments throughout California in the 1920s and 1930s, it was a sign Filipinos frequently encountered in their day-to-day lives symptomatic of their racialization-as nationals and aliens through state-sanctioned practices and policies, and as cheap labor by capital interests and imperatives-that resulted in their disenfranchisement and disempowerment. As a consequence, Filipinos were denied not only public accommodation but also access to rights and entitlements, including citizenship, the franchise, and property ownership. In this regard, Positively No Filipinos Allowed lends itself to a reading of Filipino history that evokes the historic exclusion of Filipinos from the U.S. national polity and their location outside the cultural and racial boundaries of the nation.