I feel very sad when fellow Filipinos claim that they are "Asians," instead of "Filipinos."
Although the Philippines is considered to be part of Southeast Asia, the term "Asian" is actually more exclusive and rightfully more appropriate to the people of North and East Asia - the Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese and Korean.
Some people say, on the other hand, that we are much more related to the Pacific Islanders and the Maori people. But if you would look at them, you would see that Filipinos are still very different.
We, Filipinos, are a "melting pot" of many different ethnic backgrounds. Prehistoric accounts reveal that successive waves of migration of Blacks, Indonesians, and Malays constituted the first three basic ethnic groups in the Philippine shores. These groups had been in contact with the Indians, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese and Europeans through trade, and they had intermarriaged among themselves; thereby, creating a much more distinct race that came to be known to the Spaniards as "Indios". When Spain colonized the Philippines, the "Filipino" was born. Originally, the term, "Filipino" was entitled to Spanish citizens who were born in the Philippine Islands but when the Philippines became independent from Spain, the term included even the "Indios," the prehistoric mixture of many ethnicities that populated pre-Spanish Philippines; the "Mestizos," the mixture of Indios and Spaniards; and the Spanish citizens.
Genotypically and phenotypically, the Filipinos are fundamentally of Malay stock, the great brown race of Indo-China and Malayan Peninsula. But the Filipinos are utterly more sophisticated looking than our Malay kins. This is obviously because of the Hispanic element that prevail in our blood and culture. However, the Filipinos still vary from our Latin brothers even if we both have a common Hispanic background.
In the next few decades or centuries, when all the races of the world mix and blend, all of them would look and be like us. We are the Filipino people, the great blend of the world's races, and we deserve our place and recognition as "Filipinos."
Now, I would like to appeal to all Filipinos to be proud of our national identity.
WE ARE THE FILIPINO PEOPLE!!!