South African Grammy Award-winning singer Tyla is adamant that she has never denounced her blackness amid racial identity controversy.

The conversation around Tyla’s race and ethnicity began in 2020 with a TikTok video celebrating her mixed heritage and labelling herself a “proud coloured South African woman”.

African Americans were up in arms that a person, whom they consider “black” based on their racial context, was calling herself “coloured”. Also “coloured” is a historically loaded terminology with negative connotations and has been used to categorize people based on racial distinctions imposed during segregation in America.

Race and identity are particularly sensitive and complex topics in the United States, where racial dynamics and historical representation differ significantly from those in other countries, including South Africa.

South Africa’s unique history, includes apartheid which shaped its racial identity and structures through racial segregation. It enforced strict racial divisions and limited the rights of non-white citizens.

Apartheid, a tumultuous period that has shaped modern South Africa, refers to the period between 1948 and 1994 when the white minority ruled and oppressed the black majority.

So, when the 22-year-old ‘Jump‘ hitmaker, who carries Irish, Indian, and Zulu blood, acknowledges that in her native South Africa when a person is mixed they are referred to as “coloured”—the concept is outlandish for Black Americans.

The racial saga returned to dog Tyla during her June 13 interview on The Breakfast Club, as controversial personality Charlamagne the God asked her to “explain the debate” around her ethnicity as a coloured woman.

Dodging the question, Tyla looked behind for a directive from her team, to which a woman could be heard asking Charlamagne to please pose another question.

Charlamagne was seemingly pleased that Tyla’s team wanted to avoid the question as the interview continued awkwardly—watching the artiste’s body language and ‘explaining’ that interviewers like himself would take her reluctance as a challenge.

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She never denied her “Blackness”

Subsequently, social media reacted to the static moment from the interview with mixed opinions on the matter.

Tyla then took to her X account to clarify why she did not answer the question on the show.

“[I] Never denied my blackness, idk (I don’t know) where that came from…I’m mixed with black/Zulu, Irish, Mauritian/Indian and Coloured,” Tyla posted on her X account.

“In South Africa (SA), I would be classified as a Coloured woman and in other places I would be classified as a black woman. Race is classified differently in different parts of the world.” Tyla added.

Tyla declared that she does not expect folks outside of her culture to refer to her coloured, acknowledging the cultural differences across the globe.

“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 SA, But to close this conversation, I’m both Coloured in South Africa and a black woman…”