For many in the U.S., May is about celebrating Cinco de Mayo or planning for long Memorial Day weekend and the start of summer. But for this writer and more than 18 million Americans of Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander heritage, it’s Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month.

Why May? In May 1983, the first Japanese immigrants arrived in the United States, and in May 1869, the transcontinental railroad was completed by a workforce that included a large number of immigrants from China. These are two major historical events, giving us all an excuse to commemorate the many contributions made to the country by Americans of Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander descent.

How are corporate marketers and advertisers marking Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month? Many, including ATT, McDonald’s and Walmart, are sponsoring programs and events at their home offices or in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington honoring civic, educational, business, corporate and governmental leaders. Some are holding conferences, panel discussions and symposia covering a range of topics, including leadership development, political empowerment and civic engagement.

Marketers and advertisers need to know that Asian-Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are not monolithic. We hail from a variety of cultural backgrounds and ethnicities. Our numbers are not concentrated in the West but are increasing rapidly in a large number of states in the Midwest, Northeast and Southeast.

What could your companies be doing to learn more about the achievements and contributions made by Americans of Asian or Pacific Islander heritage? Plenty. Here are a few suggestions:

• Invite an Asian-American or Pacific Islander American member of your executive team to give a talk on his or her experiences living in the U.S. (You need to have at least one Asian-American or Pacific Islander American on your team to apply this idea.)

• Invite a faculty member from a college or university with an Asian-American or Pacific Islander American studies program to offer a talk about these communities and consumers.

• Convene a panel discussion of Asian-American and Pacific Islander American community and civic leaders to talk about their communities, interests, needs, and aspirations.

• Invite one of the more than 865 Asian-American or Pacific Islander traditional media outlets and/or one of the more than 400 social-media sites to offer a talk on their perspectives about their respective communities and on the future of media in the U.S.

• Invite an elected or an appointed official of Asian-American or Pacific-Islander heritage to talk about the growing number of this group in public service.

• Take a member of your team who is Asian-American, Native Hawaiian and/or Pacific Islander out for a meal or a drink to learn what it means for him/her to be a member of that group, or person of mixed heritage.

If you complete one or more of the foregoing, you’ll walk away with a greater appreciation for the diversity of our country and the contributions made by Asian-Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

A note about the actor Ashton Kutcher and Pop Chips.

I agree with what blogger/entrepreneur Anil Dash said in his blog. I also want to note that I don’t believe for a minute that anyone at Pop Chips or its agency is racist. (The company recently apologized and pulled the offending ads.)

We do need to learn from these gaffes. It is not OK to paint your face brown, dress up as an Asian Indian and speak with an exaggerated foreign accent to promote a product or service. This is not only demeaning but bolsters negative stereotypes about Asians and Asian-Americans as silly, feeble-minded and devoid of sophistication.

Perhaps Pop Chips should take this opportunity to invite a group of civic and community leaders to its offices to talk about having a more positive portrayal of Asians and Asian-Americans. After all, it is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. I’d be more than willing to offer them a few suggestions.

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While President Barack Obama and GOP rival Mitt Romney will make special efforts to appeal to certain groups, the competition for the Latino vote will be one of the most intense. And it’s already started.

Hispanic voters are the fastest-growing voting bloc in the U.S. A record 12.2 million Latinos are expected to cast ballots this year.

More important, Latinos will cast a lot of those votes in swing states.

Hispanic votes helped Mr. Obama turn New Mexico, Colorado, Florida and Nevada from red to blue in 2008 and may have also made a difference in Virginia and North Carolina, two other Republican strongholds the president won.

In all, Mr. Obama received 67% of the Hispanic vote. Mr. Romney told donors in Florida if he can’t chip away at that support, “it spells doom for us.”

Lionel Sosa, owner of a Hispanic advertising firm in Texas and adviser to George W. Bush and John McCain, said Mr. Romney has to distance himself from the hard-line stance on immigration he adopted when he was battling primary rivals.

The Obama campaign spent $25 million in 2008 on Spanish-language ads. Mr. Sosa said Mr. Romney has to pour money into both Spanish-language ads and English-language ads that appeal to Latinos, as most Hispanic voters are English-dominant.

But Mr. Sosa said the best thing Mr. Romney could do is pick a Hispanic running mate, preferably Sen. Marco Rubio, a Tea Party favorite from the swing state of Florida.

“If Romney does all of these things, he can get 50% of the Latino vote,” Mr. Sosa said. “But if the election were held today, he would lose.”

Mr. Obama also has to work hard to shore up his popularity among Latinos, many of whom are dismayed that the president has set records for deportations and failed to spend political capital on a comprehensive immigration bill.

The president launched “Latinos for Obama” in April and ran the first Spanish-language ad of the 2012 presidential race in Florida.

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee has rolled out a “Hispanic Outreach Program” that sent organizers to Florida, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia and North Carolina.

David Candelaria, general manager of a Univision station in El Paso, Texas, that has about 20,000 viewers in New Mexico, said both campaigns as well as some Democratic PACs have contacted him about advertising.

“They’re talking, but nobody has placed anything yet,” Mr. Candelaria said. “We’re thinking it’s going to happen in late May or early June. And we’re expecting a lot more buys than four years ago.”

For a second, tech guru Anil Dash was so over Popchips.

Not because he didn’t like the taste, but because its recent digital campaign featuring Ashton Kutcher in “brownface,” as Mr. Dash called it, “revealed a much larger, more complex problem with their company and with the ecosystem of people and companies that they partner with,” he wrote in a blog post this afternoon.

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In the course of that post, Mr. Dash slammed various companies and people responsible for creating and promoting the ad. He made sure to harshly criticize ad agency Zambezi, PR agency Alison Brod and Mr. Kutcher.

Here’s what he had asked for, via his blog:

* That the PR firm that promoted this campaign should acknowledge its failure.

* That Ashton Kutcher should personally apologize.

* That Popchips should not pull this ad down but instead should leave it up and link to not an apology, but an explanation of how their process failed and resulted in this racist ad being created.

* That the firm that led the creation of the ad should name the team members who participated in its creation.

But that was before he spoke to the founder of Popchips, Keith Belling. After Mr. Belling took his call, he tweeted this: “@anildash Just got off the phone w/ the founder of @popchips, who was thoughtful, sincere, contrite. I’m optimistic about their response.”

We’ll see if Popchips delivers. When Ad Age last checked, the video was already made private on YouTube — which would be in violation of Mr. Dash’s wishes. And the company, via PR agency Alison Brod PR, didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing in a statement to us.

It said: “The new Popchips worldwide dating video and ad campaign was created to provoke a few laughs and was never intended to stereotype or offend anyone. At Popchips we embrace all types of shapes, flavors and colors, and appreciate all snackers, no matter their race or ethnicity. We hope people can enjoy this in the spirit it was intended.”