Asian, Southeast Asian, Austronesian, Malay.

Austronesian people is the indication of those who speak an Austronesian language. They are predominantly inhabitants of the Pacific islands like Polynesia and extend until Madagascar. Among the Austronesian countries are the Philippine islands. Since I have always felt something not 100% accurate with the term "Asian", I finally realized the precision of the adjective "Austronesian", or "Malay," even though the Filipinos are a mixed people with various tribes disseminated on over 7,000 islands. People mostly think of Chinese or Japanese, maybe even Thai or Vietnamese when they see Asians. That is the common thing. However, Filipino is rarely a name that comes to their mind.

Source: Wikipedia

During World War II, the Japanese sought to invade the Philippines, and when they entered the country, they immediately began to oppress the Filipinos, degrading them as "racially inferior." Japanese treated Filipino civilians accordingly. A former article on this blog shows the Leon Cooper documentary in which witnesses of the Japanse invasion talk about the maltreatment of the Philippine people - see here. This led to an anti-Japanese sentiment in the Philippines, although Americans very often portrayed Filipinos as "racially inferior" as well as the article on Lost Heritage delineates. 

However, it is not because of oppression that Filipinos may be considered rather Austronesian than Asian. It is also not so much important to classify people according to their phenotype. Furthermore, Austronesian can be a part of Asian as well, just as it can be a part of Africa, as in the example of Madagascar. It is not necessarily about Geography, but about identity. Regarding the Philippine's culture, they have a lot in common with those countries marked in the map above. Today, the Filipino people are predominantly Malay, although in this case, one could also be more anthropologically specific about the origin of the majority. Nevertheless, anthropology aside, when it comes to identification, I myself see more in common with the Malay than with the Asian or East Asian culture, which is more Far East, whereas the Philippines is actually Pacific. 

There are many feasts in the Philippines that celebrate the Malay and the Negrito culture, especially at the annual Dinagyang festival. The selected video clips below provide us with an insight into this rich culture:

Tribu Panayanon, Dinagyang 2016, Iloilo City, (c) Simply Iloilo

Aeta Dance, Native Filipinos, (c) Jen Banez

What can be ultimately said about the Filipino people is that they are neither pure Asian, nor pure Negritos. They are not fully Malay either, and even have Spanish ancestry due to the 400 years of Spanish reign. I am not an anthropologist, so this is not an analysis of the Filipino people. It is simply a short pondering about my own ancestry, and after all, classifying humans should not be the main idea of heritage, but knowing one's culture and history.