Fans are debating Tyla‘s identity as a South African ‘Coloured,’ with North American listeners questioning why the singer-songwriter is associated with a term many consider racist. Western fans of singer-songwriter Tyla have questions about the 21-year-old Johannesburg native after learning she doesn’t identify as “Black.”
The debate started when hometown fans of the Johannesburg South African native responded to a tweet of Tyla and Travis Scott which said it’s the first they saw Scott posed with a Blake woman. One fan said, “Tyla is a COLOURED woman. Tyla does not identify as Black.”
The responses then came in “That girl is black.”
Mel Smith tweet, “The issue wasn’t Tyla not wanting us to call her “Black.” It was wanting Americans to call someone we perceived as Black “colored.” For historical reasons, we’re just not with it.”
The singer-songwriter has steadily been getting attention stateside thanks to her hit song “Water,” which peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 and her features on US late night shows Jimmy Fallon and Kimmel.
She posted on Instagram in a now deleted post, “Not long ago I was just a girl in South Africa dreaming of moments like this…
Even though I’ve been grindingggg for years it feels like this is all happening so fast.
I cannot wait for the world to see what an African Popstar looks like!”
One person tweeted, “we are not calling anybody colored, that’s weird…”
Tyla also has a string of popular tracks on TikTok as well as a nomination for Best African Music Performance at the 2024 Grammy Awards and a Soul Train Award. But some fans have expressed shock to learn that she identifies as “Coloured” (with a u, specifically), a term that can be used in South African for those of mixed ethnicity.
The term “colored” has a different connotation in the United States—a racist categorization used prominently during the Jim Crow era to segregate people—which explains why some Western listeners have questioned its usage.
South African journalist Misa Narrates emphasized in Afropunk that the term “Coloured” is a specific reference.
“For South Africans, Coloured is a term that identifies a community who have cultivated a culture, language, and overall identity that wasn’t related to their segregation, but rather to identifying the newly established community.”
During South Africa’s apartheid era (1948 to the early ’90s), “Coloured” was legally defined as a racial classification, referring to individuals outside the categories of white or Africa’s aboriginal groups. In South Africa, it designates a distinct racial group alongside Black, white, and Indian communities, differing from its American usage without the “u.” The Coloured community is diverse and doesn’t neatly align with America’s binary racial concepts.
One TikToker Simone Umba in September sparked debate when she shot down someone correcting her for saying Tyla is Black.
“This is a miseducation,” Umba said. “Baby, colored is what they called Black people before they got rights in this country.”
Another person on Twitter recently says Tyla is considering indigenous Black South Africans.
Tyla who am signed to Epic Records told Rolling Stone in September that she does look up to artists who identified as black, “I really looked up to ’90s singers like Aaliyah, also Rihanna and Cassie. They were artists whose concerts I watched constantly and imagined myself being one day,” she said.
Her single “Water” is now #1 on US Urban Radio according to Mediabase.
