To paraphrase a line from Tyla’s summer bop “Jump”: They never met a mixed-race girl from Joburg… and it shows.
The South African singer was a guest on the iHeartRadio radio show The breakfast club when host Charlamagne Tha God asked Tyla to explain what she means when she says she identifies as a person “of color.” Tyla’s rep, off-camera, answered the question, asking if they could skip it — Charlamagne agreed, but noted the “awkward” moment would remain in the final interview.
Tyla has described herself as being of color in the past, which has given rise to the narrative that she is somehow in denial about her blackness. The 22-year-old young man therefore turned to X to set the record straight,
Silence.
Amy Sussman/Getty
“I have never denied my blackness, I don’t know where it comes from,” she wrote. “I am mixed with blacks/Zulus, Irish, Mauritians/Indians and Métis. In Southa I would be classified as a woman of color and in other places I would be classified as a black woman. The breed is classified differently in different regions of the world. »
Historically, in America, colored (without the “u”) is an outdated and derogatory term for black people. But Tyla isn’t American, and that’s where the confusion begins. “Coloured” also appears to be an outdated term, a holdover from the apartheid regime in South Africa from 1950 to 1991, and used as a social category to differentiate blacks from whites.
Tyla initially sparked “controversy” when a video she posted before her rise to fame gained traction last December. In the video, Tyla wears Bantu knots, a traditionally Zulu hairstyle, while declaring herself “colored” and explaining that this means she “comes from a lot of different cultures.”
However, some American viewers were offended by the term. The Grammy winner addressed the debate in a cover story in April with Cosmopolitansaying, “When people say, ‘You’re denying your blackness,’ that’s not it at all. I’ve never said I’m not black. It’s just that I grew up as South African knowing I’m mixed race. And now that I’m exposed to more things, it’s done other things to me too. I’m also mixed race, I’m also black. I know people like to find a definition of. things, but it’s ‘and’, not ‘or’.
It appears Charlamagne hasn’t read this interview, but regardless, as she indicated in her interview with him, Tyla is done with the conversation.
“I don’t expect to be identified as mixed race outside of Southa by someone who isn’t comfortable doing so because I understand the weight of that word outside of South Africa, but for conclude this conversation, I am both colored in South Africa and a black woman,” she concluded, signing off with the Zulu slang for “Let’s go!”
