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Tyla is, once again, clarifying and defending her racial identity to the public.
On June 13, the South African singer appeared on New York City's Power 105.1 radio morning show The Breakfast Club, hosted by controversial hosts Charlamagne Tha God, DJ Envy, and Jess Hilarious. During the last leg of the conversation, which mostly focused on her global crossover and musical growth, Charlamagne switches gears abruptly from discussing Tyla's work-life balance to her identity.
“School me on these debates that they be having about your identity as a South African Coloured person," the host asks slowly. "What does that even mean?” Without responding, Tyla swivels in her chair to look at a representative from her team. “Can we not? Por favor?” Her rep interjects from off-screen.
“I like that… I like when they talk from the back and say we can't— that's even better," Charlamagne says while motioning for Tyla to respond on her own. Still composed, Tyla silently turns towards her rep once more. “Next one, please," they ask, signaling for The Breakfast Club hosts to move on, which they did, awkwardly, to a question about Kai Cenat failing to shoot his shot on a recent livestream.
A clip of the interaction quickly went viral across social media with polarized reactions. Many came to the singer's defense, citing The Breakfast Club's problematic reputation of provoking lines of questioning and accusing the radio show of engagement-baiting. “Every discussion isn’t meant for every platform,” posted Nathan Vinson, an editor at People. Others criticized the singer's silence and refusal to answer the question, claiming it was fair ground and a missed opportunity to educate audiences with a canned reply. “This is stupid on her team's behalf just have a standard answer ready,” wrote one person on X.
The argument around Tyla denying her Blackness arguably began after a TikTok she made in 2020 was recirculated after the 22-year-old Grammy-winning artist found more fame. In the video, she refers to herself as a “Coloured South African,” explaining that term means she comes “from a lot of different cultures," and that in her family, “one of those cultures [is] Zulu.”
In America, the term “colored” without the letter u is a slur from the Jim Crow era. Hearing Tyla refer to herself as such has caused confusion and pain amongst American audience members who are unaware of the history of the term elsewhere in the world. “Coloured” is also a vestige of racial segregation; according to BBC, in South Africa, Coloured people belong to an ancestral, multiracial community legally established during the violent system of Apartheid in South Africa, following the Population Registration Act of 1950's requiring of people to register into one of four racial categories: white, Black, Indian, or coloured.
While Coloured people received this categorization due to segregation, the Coloured community have their own language, customs and culture, and diverse, collective identity apart from the oppressive history their denomination is tied to. Michael Morris, the head of media at the South African Institute of Race Relations, told BBC that the Coloured community is “quintessentially South African." "Being a mixture of black, white, Asian, it was forged in the southern African geography in a way that no other can claim," Morris told the outlet. From an American understanding, this would mean that Coloured people are ethnically multiracial or “mixed."
American social media users have claimed Tyla doesn't “identify as Black” due to her use of the term Coloured when describing herself, and have expressed frustration around her choice to not call herself “Black.” “Tyla herself said she’s not black so why y’all keep calling her that!” wrote one person on X back in May.
Following the discourse, Tyla took to X to literally break her silence with a written statement. “Never denied my blackness, idk where that came from… I'm mixed with black/Zulu, Irish, Mauritian/Indian, and Coloured,” wrote the “Jump” singer. “In [South Africa], I would be classified as a Coloured woman, and other places, I would be classified as a Black woman. Race is classified differently in different parts of the world.”
“I don't expect to be identified as Coloured outside of [South Africa] by anyone not comfortable doing so because I understand the weight of that word outside of S.A.,” she continued. “But to close this conversation, I'm both Coloured in South Africa and a black woman. As a woman for the culture. It's and not or.”
This is not the first or even the second time that Tyla has been asked publicly about her racial identity — and in the past, she's taken the time to elaborately articulate her race and heritage and has even expressed gratitude for her identity sparking global dialogue.
In May 2023, pre-"Water," she explained how “stressful” it is to refer to herself as Coloured while in America. “I know it's a derogatory term, but that's what we are called in South Africa,” she said while appearing on Dallas radio show 97.9 The Beat. As recently as April 2024, Tyla was asked about the term and her ability to proudly use it to describe her identity during her cover interview for Cosmopolitan.
“I’m happy there’s a conversation happening and that people are learning that Africa is more than just Black and white,” she answered. “Obviously, it gets messy and no one likes that, but I’m just happy people know we exist and have our own culture.”
It's important to understand that while Tyla may be one of the most hypervisible Coloured public figures, it is not her responsibility to continue to educate media personalities or the general public on the sociopolitical context of her racial and ethnic identity. Continuously dissecting her Blackness within the historical context of a country she does not hail from and forcing her to repeatedly defend her Blackness is unfair — especially when resources to learn about South African history and the lived experiences of Coloured people have been widely documented. Author Tessa Dooms stitched a TikTok criticizing Tyla's 2020 video by plugging her book with Lynsey Chutel, Coloured: How Classification Became Culture.
“When people are like, ‘You’re denying your Blackness,’ it’s not that at all. I never said I am not Black. It’s just that I grew up as a South African knowing myself as Coloured,” she continued to Cosmo. “And now that I’m exposed to more things, it has made me other things too. I’m also mixed-race. I’m also Black. I know people like finding a definition for things, but it’s ‘and,’ not ‘or.’ As young people, we have a platform where we can speak about things like this, things that are new and controversial and scary.”
