Tyla

With “Water” singer Tyla growing in popularity after being nominated for a Grammy and collaborating with Travis Scott on the remix of the breakout hit, fans are rightfully more curious about the 21-year-old Johannesburg native than ever. However, as discussions on social media have shown, as global music becomes more popular in the United States, music fans will also be experiencing more culture shock as they encounter different perspectives from around the world (like the metric system).

One of the questions that fans have been asking since Tyla’s breakout is whether the South African singer is Black. With bios identifying her heritage as Indian, Irish, Mauritian, and Zulu, there are more than a few fans who have found confusion in the classification, especially as two different viewpoints on race clash. While in the US, the South Africa-born artist would be considered Black, which is broadly a descriptor for people of native African descent, in South Africa, she would be considered “coloured,” a somewhat dated designation reserved for people of mixed ancestry.

Although the term was enforced by a now-defunct colonial government, its impact remains in how people see themselves and classify race in South Africa (a stark reminder that race is just a construct, and a very clunky one at that). While “colored” remains a charged term in the US due to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, South Africa is far less removed from its history of apartheid segregation (which only ended 30 years ago). The two nations have largely separate views of race, but the one thing that both should agree on is that all people deserve respect and basic human dignity despite their origins or skin color (or whether a pencil sticks in their hair).

The important thing to focus on is Tyla’s musical success, though. She’s the first South African artist to chart in the US in over 50 years; that’s impressive no matter who someone is.

South African singer Tyla has been one of the biggest breakout artists of 2023. Her song “Water” went from TikTok sensation to Grammy nominations, raising the 21-year-old Johannesburg native’s profile considerably in a relatively short time. Naturally, fans want to know more about her; however, as they’ve learned more, they may have developed some new questions, particularly when they find out she does not identify as “Black.”

No, this isn’t a Mean Girls situation. It’s actually much more nuanced than that — a reminder that the United States isn’t the center of the universe and that race is a constructed concept, and not a very useful or even logical one to begin with.

In Tyla’s native South Africa, race is viewed differently than it is in the States. Whereas in America, race is considered more of a binary (which has become more layered in recent years as groups from Latin America and Asia have grown and indigenous groups have received more recognition), South African views of race are likewise informed by apartheid but also by a more European view.

While indigenous South African groups would be considered Black and descendants of Britsh and Dutch colonists are white, a third group, “Coloured,” refers to South African citizens of mixed ethnicity, often descended from interracial couplings between native Black Africans and white settlers. In addition, people of South Asian descent were grouped into this category until the end of apartheid.

The Population Registration Act of 1950 created these categories based on criteria such as the person’s head hair (as determined by the “pencil test”), skin color, facial features, home language, employment, socioeconomic status, and even their home geography and eating and drinking habits. Eventually, the act was amended to create various subgroups; the act was repealed in 1991 with the end of apartheid, but the thinking that it created remains ingrained in the culture to this day.

So, for Tyla, identifying as “coloured” is both a function of her heritage and of the politics of her homeland. While “colored” was at one point also used in the United States, it referred almost exclusively to people of West African descent, usually the descendants of enslaved peoples. That term was eventually phased out in favor of “African-American” or more broadly, “Black,” but this sort of classification is unique to the United States. As our popular culture becomes more global, though, getting used to learning these other viewpoints will be essential to remaining literate and understanding the art that bonds us all together.