Sorry but the discourse around Tyla’s identity has exposed something that deserves to be called out: expecting Africans to understand themselves primarily through a Black American racial framework, while refusing to engage with African’s countries’ racial hierarchies and colonial histories, is a form of xenocentrism that has already become xenophobic in this case.
At some point there has to be intellectual curiosity from
BA. Black Americans are not the only Black people with histories of racialisation, colonialism or oppression. South Africa’s racial classifications for example emerged from a distinct colonial and apartheid system with its own categories, meanings and consequences. Those histories cannot simply be overwritten by an American understanding of race, simply because Tyla wants to market herself to the BA audience. It doesn’t work like that.
Tyla did not invent South Africa’s racial hierarchy any more than Black Americans invented Jim Crow or the one-drop rule. Both are products of white supremacy, but they developed differently in different places. Expecting her to reject the identity that was historically imposed, negotiated and understood within her own country simply to satisfy an American racial framework is insane.
.@POTUS on the Jordan vs. LeBron debate: "Michael Jordan's a guy that's a friend of mine... and I think LeBron is—maybe he's a racist, but maybe he doesn't like Trump, I don't know—but I only like people that like me, so I would say Michael Jordan all the way."
LEBRON IS COMING TO PHILLY.
By the power vested in me as the Governor of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and a die-hard Sixers fan... I hereby proclaim today to be LEBRON JAMES DAY.
Welcome to the City of Brotherly Love, @KingJames.
People can’t handle Biracials who don’t pander. Doja, Tamera Mowry, Tyla, etc. Anytime a biracial isn’t shucking, jiving, or hiding their white mama, there’s endless discourse.
Adolf Hitler's birthplace in Austria was inaugurated as a police station on Wednesday in an effort to destroy the building's appeal as a site of pilgrimage for people who glorify the Nazi dictator.