Why do some Filipinos consider themselves Asian while others classify themselves as Pacific Islander? Is it technically one in the same?
Disregarding the geographical situation of the Philippines, Filipinos are still Asians ?
they came from mainland asia through the land bridges from north Luzon that linked the Philippines-Taiwan-Mainland asia during the ice age. Besides, no one lives in the Philippines before, and these so-called true filipinos are migrants as well. They were the first wave of migrants in the Philippines.
the second wave of migrants were Indonesians and there were two phenotypes: the lean tall ones with some caucasoid features and the other has strong muscular built with pacific islander features. they migrated to the Philippines via 3 land bridges in the south during the ice age: Palawan- Borneo, Mindanao-Borneo, and Mindanao-Celebes.
the third wave of migrants were Malaysians or Malays after the ice age. they came to the Philippines by water vessels called 'Balangai'.
with all the barter trades with chinese, japanese, arabs, and indians during the pre-hispanic era, there were inter-racial marriages too.
during the spanish colonial times, inter-racial marriages between spaniards and the natives also happen, although not as common as in latin americas. in fact (although still subjected to further research), only about 4% of filipinos are part spanish, but 4% of approximately 90 million filipinos, which is 3.6 million, is still a lot!!!! during this time, a lot of chinese immigrants inter-bred with the natives. chinese people grew more in numbers during the late 1900's when they migrated to the Philippines to escape communism. today, there are so many filipinos who are part chinese. basing from my observation, i'd say about 20% of filipinos are part chinese.
during the american regime, there were significant inter-racial marriages between americans and the filipino natives, especially in subic, olongapo, clark, samat, and leyte.
after the japanese occupation, some soldiers fled to the coldillera mountains and inter-bred with the natives.
there are significant number of vietnamese communities too in Palawan because they were the relocated refugees who chose to live there.
today, there are significant number of intermarriages between filipinos and other races.
technically speaking, filipinos are genetically mixed, but for the sake of simplicity, they are called as asians because most of them are from the malay stock (indonesians and malaysians); and malays are asians(southeast asians, that is). chinese, japanese, mongols, and koreans are EAST asians and they are different from MALAYS, but both are definitely asians.
what creates this confusion is that people (especially westerners) have this preconceived notion about what asians should look like: like east asians; and with the geographical situatuation of the Philippines plus the genetic resemblance of malays with pacific islanders, not to mention that a lot of filipinos could pass as pacific islanders, some people tend to think that filipinos are pacific islanders. while its not their fault that they lack knowledge about it, some filipinos tend to stick to the pacific islander type for whatever reason they may have: lack of nationalistic pride, ethnic benefits, passport problems (especially if the passport came from the oceanas), or simply being misled by misinformed people.
