Filipino Identity Essay

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Filipino Identity -The Forgotten Race- Filipino Americans constitute the second largest Asian group in the United States however their presence is not immediately felt or acknowledged when compared to other ethnic groups. This “invisibility” is due to Filipino’s lack of well-defined ethnic landscapes, and what I believe is a confusion of ethnic identity within the people due to the influence of the many different inhabitants and colonial masters of the Philippine islands. There were four waves of inhabitants of the Philippine islands. The first wave of indigenous people that traveled to explore new homeland was the Aetas. The Aetas or Negritos were a cross of Afro-Asiatic and Austro-Aborigines. These people were the first to reach the island archipelago and call it home around 15,000 to 3,000 B.C. and preceding the Austronesian migrations. The Aetas were a mix decent of African and Asiatic roots who came from Asia evolving as a new race of human beings (Phenotypically much different from the present day Africans or Asians). The Aetas have dark to very dark brown skinned and curly to kinky, afro-like textured hair. They tend to be small in stature, small frame, small nose, with dark brown eyes. Aeta are Australo-Melanesians. As a comparative example, today other Australo-Melanesians are the Aborigines of Australia, Papuans and also the Melanesians; for example people of the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia etc. The history of the Aeta people continue to confound today’s anthropologists and archaeologists. One theory is that the Aeta are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the Philippine Islands who, contrary to their seafaring Austronesian neighbors, arrived and settled on the islands via land bridges that linked the country with the Asian mainland around 30,000 years ago. The Aeta probably came from Borneo and crossed a “land

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