When Geography Changes, So Do Definitions
- Sylvian Hyde
- Jul 27
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 27
There was something revealing about watching the conversation surrounding Tyla’s recent interview. What fascinated me was not the controversy itself, but how many people approached it believing there could only be one correct answer. Identity, however, has rarely been that simple. The words people use to describe themselves are often products of history, geography, politics, and culture long before they become personal choices.
Growing up in Belize, I never found it difficult to understand why someone from South Africa might describe herself as Colored while someone born in the United States might hear that same word very differently. Those realities can exist simultaneously without either being dishonest. They were shaped by different histories. In South Africa, Coloured developed as a distinct demographic classification with its own complex history under colonialism and apartheid. In the United States, the word carries the weight of segregation and racial discrimination, making it understandably painful for many Americans. The same word can therefore communicate entirely different experiences depending on where it is spoken.
Migration complicates those realities even further. Spend enough time in immigrant communities and you begin to notice that the African diaspora is anything but monolithic. There are Africans who feel misunderstood by African Americans. There are African Americans who feel disconnected from Africans and Caribbean people. There are Caribbean communities with their own identities, languages, and histories. There are also countless people who reject those divisions altogether and simply see themselves as members of a broader global Black community. All of these perspectives exist simultaneously, and none can erase the others.
The challenge is that global media often compresses those differences into a single conversation. Social media, in particular, rewards certainty rather than context. It is easier to argue over whether someone “should” identify a certain way than it is to ask why different societies developed different understandings of race in the first place. The result is that individuals become symbols in debates they did not create. Perhaps that is the deeper lesson behind the reaction to Tyla. The discussion was never only about one artist. It became a collision between national histories, inherited language, and competing cultural experiences. Instead of examining those systems, many conversations focused almost exclusively on the individual standing in the middle of them.
History suggests that division rarely sustains itself without reinforcement. Communities often become absorbed in defending labels while overlooking the structures that influence how those labels are understood and deployed. That observation does not mean every disagreement is manufactured or coordinated, but it does invite us to ask a different set of questions. Why do certain identity debates spread so quickly? Who benefits when conversations remain polarized rather than contextualized? What opportunities for understanding are lost when complexity is reduced to opposing sides?
The more I meet my self and others, the less convinced I become that identity can be neatly standardized across the world. Geography changes language. History changes meaning. Culture changes perception. Expecting every society to arrive at identical definitions ignores the realities that shaped them. Maybe the goal should not be forcing everyone into a single vocabulary. Perhaps it is developing enough historical awareness to recognize that words often carry different meanings across different societies. Understanding that distinction does not weaken solidarity. If anything, it strengthens it by allowing people to acknowledge one another’s histories without demanding that every story be identical.
The world has become increasingly connected, but connection does not erase context. Sometimes the most productive conversations begin when we stop asking whether one definition must replace another and instead ask what history made both definitions possible in the first place.
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