Becca Monaghan
Jun 14, 2024
Variety
Tyla recently made an appearance on The Breakfast Club on Thursday (13 June) where she dodged a question about her identity.
It comes after the star sparked a debate last year when a TikTok surfaced on the platform in which she referred to herself as a "coloured South African." She explained that it meant she comes from several different cultures.
Viewers questioned her comments given the term is considered a slur in the US. However, many others jumped to her defence saying it does not hold the same definition in South Africa as it does in America.
During The Breakfast Club, host Charlamagne tha God said: "School me on these debates that they be having about your identity as a South African coloured person. What does that even mean?"
It was then her publicist stepped in and said: "Can we not? Por favor," adding: "Next one, please."
Just hours after her appearance, the singer turned to her Instagram account with a statement.
"Never denied my blackness, idk where that came from…I’m mixed with Black/Zulu, Irish, Mauritian/Indian and Coloured," Tyla wrote in her Instagram Story. "In [South Africa] I would be classified as a Coloured woman and other places I would be classified as a Black women. Race is classified differently in different parts of the world."
The 22-year-old continued: "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 women…"
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