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Are Filipinos Malay?: A Thread 
As we all know, race is a social construct. There’s actually more genetic diversity *within* races than between them. If you don’t agree or didn’t know this, read this: https://www.psychologytoday.com/sg/blog/without-prejudice/201612/race-social-construction
In different countries, the same people are labelled under a different race bc race is a social construct. In the Philippines, I am Filipino. In America, I’d be “Asian American”, & in Singapore, I am “Other”. It all depends where you are and what people there classify as races.
The concept of a Malay race was first proposed by a white person, a German physician, Dr Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. He proposed there were five races on Earth - Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, & American. Many anthropologists worldwide have sincerejected this theory.
So what is a Malay? Malays are an ethnic group indigenous to Malaysia and Indonesia. An ethnic group is a group of people who consider themselves culturally similar enough to be one people or one ethnicity.
Not everyone in Malaysia and Indonesia are Malays. Malays are only native to Peninsular Malaysia, & parts of Borneo & Sumatra. Everyone else are part of different ethnic groups - Javanese, Dayak, Buginese, Sundanese, Balinese, Iban, Orang Laut etc. Malay is "Melayu" in this map.
The Malay language is not even mutually intelligible with Tagalog or any language in the Philippines. There are a few loanwords here and there as well as common origins as speaking languages from the Austronesian language family, but we are very culturally different.
So if there are lots of people in Malaysia/Indonesia who don’t even consider themselves Malay, why do Filipinos consider themselves Malay? Well, we’ll have to go back to colonialism.
As I mentioned earlier, when colonialism happened, colonisers began to take what they saw as similarities between peoples, and label them as a race despite them not being extremely similar to each other. Here are a few examples of what westerners considered "races":
One big pusher of this theory that Filipinos were part of a Malay race was American anthropologist H. Otley Beyer, who taught the four waves migration theory, proposing that lowlander Filipinos are actually Malays who came from Malaysia and Indonesia.
This is now no longer widely accepted amongst most anthropologists, but is still taught in schools and propagated by Filipino historians. But we now know that this misconception is due to colonialism and Westerns not knowing how to classify us properly.
Jose Rizal is often called “the pride of the Malay race”, and propagated this idea as well, and there was even once an attempt to unify Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia into one country called Maphilindo, which people believed to be falsely divided by colonial powers.
However, it is clear in history that we were divided already, into small polities, chiefdoms, sultanates and kingdoms that often traded each other, and never spoke one singular language than unified us, not even Malay.
So it is clear that although we have a common linguistic heritage as Austronesians, there is no such thing as a “Malay race” and Filipinos are not Malay.
But where do Filipinos come from then? We are Southeast Asians, speak Austronesian languages, and for most non-Aeta ethnic groups, have ancestors who once lived on what is now modern day Taiwan thousands of years ago.
That is the most widely accepted hypothesis amongst anthropologists and scientists for the origins of most of the peoples living in our archipelago.
Sadly, this does not stop the barrage of misinformation on the internet stating otherwise.
There is also much oral folklore about our previous Rajahs, Lakans, Sultans, originating from modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia (some are true) and even whole ethnic groups migrating from modern-day Indonesia/Malaysia (unconfirmed and very unlikely).
Even urban legends such as Visayans descending from the Srivijayan empire have since been debunked.
But the truth is, our education system needs work and updating. The four waves of migration concept was debunked in the 60s and 70s but is still taught and the Malay race concept is still used throughout Southeast Asia.
To conclude, should feel more pride in our current cultures that still exist and protect our Indigenous Groups rather than try to reconnect to a nonexistent "Malay heritage". (End of thread)
Thank you!
Thank you!
