Is Tyla Black?

With the singer of “Water” Tyla increasingly popular after being nominated for a Grammy and collaborate with Travis Scott on the remix After the massive success, fans are rightly more curious than ever about the 21-year-old Johannesburg native. However, as discussions on social media have shown, as global music becomes more popular in the United States, music fans will also experience more culture shock when encountering different perspectives from around the world (as the metric system).

One of the questions fans have been asking since Tyla’s escape is whether the South African singer is black. With a biography identifying his heritage as Indian, Irish, Mauritian and Zulu, many fans have found confusion in the rankings, especially since two different points of view on the race clash. While in the United States the South African-born artist would be considered black, which is largely a descriptor for people of African descent, in South Africa she would be considered “colored”, a designation somewhat dated reserved for people of mixed ancestry. .

Although the term was applied by a now-defunct colonial government, its impact remains in the way people view themselves and classify race in South Africa (a stark reminder that race is only a construct, and very clumsy too). While “colored” remains a loaded term in the United States due to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, South Africa is much less removed from its history of apartheid segregation (which ended 30 years ago). The two nations have widely different views on race, but the one thing they should agree on is that all individuals deserve respect and basic human dignity, regardless of their origins or the color of their skin (or even if a pencil sticks to their hair).

However, the important thing to focus on is Tyla’s musical success. She is the first South African artist to appear on the American charts in over 50 years; It’s impressive no matter who anyone is.