The vocalist was born on January 30th, 2002 in Johannesburg to Sharleen and Sherwin Seethal. A Lipstick Alley thread claims that both of her parents are African, but they’re a multiracial family. Her father hails from Mauritius – an East African country – though he’s of Indian heritage, and Tyla’s mother is a South African native of Zulu descent with some Irish ancestry. When asked about her ethnicity, the “Getting Late” hitmaker described herself as “coloured,” causing some seriously heated discourse to fly on social media.
When Black Americans heard “coloured” come from Tyla’s mouth, some expressed shock as they were reminded of the word’s historic use in the United States. Americans spell it without a u, (colored), dating back to the 1950s Jim Crow era when it was commonly “used to group all Black Americans who were enslaved people” together in a derogatory manner. Meanwhile, the South African “coloured” has a less negative racial connotation, as it is mostly “a term to label mixed-race citizens” in other countries.