Gatekeeping as Safety and the Identity Question Around Tyla

Tyla. Via Bellanajia

In a candid exchange with a colleague who is South African Cape Coloured, I asked him about his background, he vaguely stated Southeast Asian and Black African. When I inquired about the country in Southeast Asia and the African ethnicities, he stated that “Many Coloureds, like Black Americans, have been dislocated from naming their indigenous African roots because of slavery and the slave trade; there is a current movement to find this information sometimes through DNA.” At the time, this was a bit surprising to me, as I was ignorant of the history of the Coloured population in South Africa*, outside of their mixed ancestry and intermediary position in the South African Apartheid caste system (1948-1994) between Black Indigenous ethnicities of what became South Africa and the white European descended settler population. So, every time the conversation around South African singer Tyla’s identity comes up on my social media feed or I hear her “Water” song, this conversation replays in my head. 

The Complexity of Identity

Identity can be complex, especially for people of African descent with histories specifically rooted in the trauma of human trafficking, enslavement, displacement, survival, and resilience. However, as my exchange with my Coloured identified colleague established a connection, shared history, and expanded my urge to explore more; Tyla and her team’s constant evasion of the identity question was rooted in anti-Blackness.

Recently, The Darkest Hue posted their perspective on Instagram, giving light to the innate colorism at the root of this evasion of “the Coloured identity question”, as well as the overt anti-Blackness and anti-Black Americanness sparked when Black people inquired about the singer’s racial identity. Marketing Tyla as racially ambiguous while positioning her as having proximity to and ownership of a Black identity is very much purposeful. 

Most recently Tyla’s team outright evaded the question on The Breakfast Club, which elicited more questions on why market Tyla on programming and outlets geared to Black audiences as a “Black” artist for this question to be off limits. She responded to the backlash from the interview on Twitter with “[...] in Southa I would be classified as a Coloured woman and other places I would be classified as a black woman. Race is classified differently in different parts of the world.” This question being off limits is increasingly interesting with Tyla’s recent Black Entertainment Television Award wins. While this remains true, at this stage it serves a different purpose. Rather than highlighting cultural and historical differences, it diminishes the conversation about how she became an easily and seductively marketable profitable product devoid of history and ancestry. This proves The Darkest Hue and other Black perspectives that have required deeper thought on the anti-Black “isms” at the root of this issue.

On Celebrities and Icons

Tyla is not an activist, advocate, or educator, from what I know. She wants to be the next Beyoncé or Rihanna from the African continent. And I have written and been interviewed before about our need to divest from celebrities and really grapple with Beyoncé (and Rihanna) as capitalist corporate enterprises that have NO moral compass and use Blackness and activism as marketing tools, not embodied politics. Although Tyla projects a youthful need to be like fellow light skin idols, in a time when South Africa has stepped up in such an essential way for freedom and justice for Palestine amid genocide and other global atrocities –I think we are beyond needing another monochromatic idol without the guts to say “Free Palestine” loud and proud.

I also think about Mariam Makeba, a Xhosa South African artist who put her life and career on the line for Black people globally and for South Africa’s freedom from the apartheid system. Makeba, who was married to activist and Pan-Africanist luminary Kwame Ture, will always be that artist who optimizes what artistry and activism look like so marginalized people have a future in a world scarily moving beyond repair. 

Makeba. Via Britannica

Additionally, racism, anti-Blackness, colorism, and white supremacy are looming realities in post-Apartheid South Africa, where white people own 70% of the land and maintain white-only townships. Contemporary Apartheid 2.0 maintains massive inequities inherited from Dutch and British settler colonialism, as well as the Afrikaner racial hierarchy and system of racial segregation. These inequities gave the likes of Elon Musk their start. Inequities that he stands behind when he spread false claims of “white genocide” in South Africa as a response to activists' push for substantial reparative justice for Black South Africa. Race matters in South Africa.

When Black people, wherever in the world, ask if someone is Black because of phenotype or customs, it is about safety, not projection of Black identity onto non-Black identified people. It is about protection, not projection. It is about connection, not projection. It is not about wanting everyone to be Black based on some godly belief in the “one-drop rule” – which is anti-Black but that is for another piece. In a world heavily dominated by anti-Blackness in the most obscure and benign ways to the overt and deadly, understanding the level of safety, protection, and connection in an exchange or the beginnings of creating community is essential. Although the term “not all skinfolk are kinfolk” exists for a reason, the question of identity helps us see non-Black identified people as a relatively familiar territory, akin to our own, and as an unknown, distinct, but safe other. Non-Black people can be (and should be) co-conspirators of Black safety.

My colleague in our exchange years ago simply explained Coloured identity as rooted and routed in the experiences of trauma, dislocation, survival, and resilience –and I easily understood as Black American and Jamaican. As a person of African ancestry, he understood that my question was not accusatory or a projection of my specific identity but an attempt to make a connection and assess my personal level of safety and comfort with him as a Black person working within a predominantly white institution. 

If a person rejects Black people’s need for safety, protection, and connection, they are anti-Black. Black people do not need permission to be gatekeepers for safety, protection and connection. The violent history Black people have endured across the world, and our representation in the mainstream media vis-à-vis cultural appropriation and Blackface minstrelsy attest to this. More importantly, Black cultural productions, from hip hop and reggaeton to afrobeats and amapiano, are marketed and made mainstream while functionally excluding dark-skinned Black creators and cultural communities. I will always inquire about the identities of celebrities marketed to Black people as a starting point, and from there, inquire about their respective politics, investments in the future, and the sustainability of Black life. 

*Sources to learn more about Coloured communities and their identities: 

Book Sources

• Erasmus, Zimitri (Ed.). (2001). Coloured by history, shaped by place: New perspectives on Coloured identities in Cape Town. Kwela Books.

Article Sources

• Adhikari, Mohamed (2006). Hope, fear, shame, frustration: Continuity and change in the expression of Coloured identity in white supremacist South Africa, 1910–1994. Journal of Southern African Studies, 32(3), 467-487.

• Quintana-Murci, Lluis, et al. (2010). Strong maternal Khoisan contribution to the South African Coloured population: A case of gender-biased admixture. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 86(4), 611–620.

• Martin, Denis-Constant. (2000). The burden of the name: Classifications and constructions of identity. The case of the “Coloureds” in Cape Town (South Africa). Center for International Research and Studies (CERI) - African Philosophy, 13(2), 99-122.

• Posel, Deborah  (2001). What’s in a name? Racial categorizations under apartheid and their afterlife. TRANSFORMATION, 47, 50-72.