Tyla isn’t necessarily the most provocative figure, but she has faced some controversy after referring to herself as “a colored South African,” as opposed to saying she’s a Black person, in a 2020 video that resurfaced in 2023. Here’s an explainer of the situation, but in short, Tyla’s use of the word has to do with the term’s different historical contexts in the US and in her native South Africa.
Now, she has taken a moment to clear the air and share her thoughts.
In a new British Vogue interview, Tyla said of the backlash, “Honestly, I felt like I had no… no control. People took it and… It just went so far that I didn’t know what to do. The way people painted me… And I understand that word is a sensitive word to people, so I don’t blame people for being touched about it. I just would have wanted an opportunity for people to actually truly listen and learn.”
She also said of her identity:
“You know that even if you give the best explanation, people will still choose not to understand. But I’m at a point where I know who I am. I know I’m a Black woman and I know I’m a colored woman as well and you can be both. And the people that care to learn, they understand now. And that’s enough for me.”
The issue was again brought up in a 2024 Breakfast Club interview, during which Tyla’s publicist shut down the line of questioning. Of that, Tyla said:
“Me choosing not to say anything, I’m happy that I didn’t. I didn’t want to explain my culture and something that is really important to me on a platform that is just going to be purposefully misconstrued. I’ve explained it a lot of times before, but people took that and put words in my mouth. They said a whole bunch of things that I never said and ran with it. If people really searched, they’ll see that in South Africa we had a lot of segregation. It was bad for a lot of us. They just classified us. And that just so happens to be the name that the white people called us. They chose to call people that were mixed ‘colored.’ And I’m not gonna lie, it was hard because all my life, obviously I knew ‘I’m Black’ but also knew that ‘I’m colored’. So when I went to America and people were like, ‘You can’t say that!’ I was in a position where I was like, ‘Oh, so what do I do? What am I then?'”
Read the full feature here.
