Why can Fat Joe say Nigga?

[white Boy]

wat constitutes a struglle? in your eyes [juronimo]

[Don Breezio]

my view is this....everybody is always screaming "racism" "reverse racism" blah blah blah....well (correct me if im wrong) but the definition of racism is seperating one race from another and treating them differently.....racism being treated badly and reverse is being treated well because of your race....so if people want racism to stop....then why seperate races by saying "its ok for blacks and hispanics to say nigga but not white people"....either let everyone say it or dont say it at all. simple as that...if a black guy is gonna go around saying nigga then a white guy should be able to do it to. saying nigga is a little different than saying "nigger pick my cotton before i sell you to mr. charlie".

personally im tired of all this im black and i deserve shit for what white people did to my ancestors. i didnt whip you or your family, i didnt enslave your family. my ancestors may have....but that doesnt mean i owe you anything. reperations...bullshit. saying nigga....bullshit. affirmative action....bullshit.

[SGV]

^^LMAO. That post reminds me of the episode where Dave Chappelle shows his appearance on Donahue for the show entitled "Angry White Men."

Anyway, I don't see how it's OK for whites to say Nigga (unless the black person they're saying it to has no problem with it) since it IS a term that was used by whites to be hurtful towards blacks. If a Black person uses it, that shouldn't give you a green light, at all.

"(And this is for) Anyway white boy who thinks he knows my struggle/Cuz he listens to Pac and his adrenaline doubles/Now I ain't got problems with your being yourself/But when you front and use the N-Word it just don't help/I might not trip and ya friends'll laugh at you/But I know some real niggas that'll straight up slap you/Now you can be down, but let's act growed up/Cuz we ain't the same color when Police show up/My cultures not a trend, being Black is not in/But for you, it's just a faze you gonna have to transcend/While, even if I tried, I could never blend in/To societies mainstream, American dream..." - Murs

Period! That should sum it up right there. Sorry guys, I don't know why you want to say Nigga so much. I don't know why you feel so threatened that you're not allowed to use it. Let it go.

[Kill]

^^LMAO. That post reminds me of the episode where Dave Chappelle shows his appearance on Donahue for the show entitled "Angry White Men."

Anyway, I don't see how it's OK for whites to say Nigga (unless the black person they're saying it to has no problem with it) since it IS a term that was used by whites to be hurtful towards blacks. If a Black person uses it, that shouldn't give you a green light, at all.

"(And this is for) Anyway white boy who thinks he knows my struggle/Cuz he listens to Pac and his adrenaline doubles/Now I ain't got problems with your being yourself/But when you front and use the N-Word it just don't help/I might not trip and ya friends'll laugh at you/But I know some real niggas that'll straight up slap you/Now you can be down, but let's act growed up/Cuz we ain't the same color when Police show up/My cultures not a trend, being Black is not in/But for you, it's just a faze you gonna have to transcend/While, even if I tried, I could never blend in/To societies mainstream, American dream..." - Murs

Period! That should sum it up right there. Sorry guys, I don't know why you want to say Nigga so much. I don't know why you feel so threatened that you're not allowed to use it. Let it go.

"Good music transcends all physical limits
It's more than something that you hear, it's something that you feel
When the author and experience and passion is real"

same song as you prolly know. I always found this contradictory in a way, because first he implies that white boys can't relate to black struggle cuz they listen to Pac. This on the other hand (being the answer to "why would you listen to Murs' black ass?") says that you do relate to music when it's, in the literal meaning of the word, real stuff. You can now argue that a white boy relating to the 'struggle' through music is not the same as a Latino relating to it cause he grew up under similar circumstances. But what about a white who grew up like that then? The slavery argument is not such a great one unless you're a pure Aztec/Maya or something, but the Spanish were very involved in that business and a real high percentage of American Latinos do have Spanish blood. And what about Latinos who grew up in rich families (also in Latin America) ? They can relate only through music as well, so in the case of Latinos you'd have to make it a matter of social status? And then we got the skin tone thing. Fat Joe is optically pretty white. So uhm, if I'm a european browner than joe, can i say nigga? am i non-white? etc...

to sum it up, all the line-drawing doesn't work for me. i don't want to say nigga and i'm not meaning to attack anybody, but all that just makes me question why fat joe can say nigga and 'whites' (which seems to go from orange-hair-summersaults-snow-white-skin people to black-hair-brown-skin persons) cannot

[SGV]

^^^The word isn't about skin color. Yes, Fat Joe is light skinned. So was Pun. So is Pitbull. So is B-Real. Big deal. They were raised with Black people, they were treated as niggas. I highly doubt any of them were treated as White Europeans, despite their skin color.

That's the point! So if Bez was treated like a nigga, I don't see why he CAN'T use the term. But, if he wasn't, which I'm sure is the case, he has no reason to use the term.

[Trauma-san]

Why can he say nigga and get away with it?

The same reason men are considered cool for fucking 100's of women, and women are considered sluts if they fuck more than 4 or 5 men. 

[Don Breezio]

and so became the double standard

[Javier]

all i gotta say is the language changes through the years.  The word "nigga" might replace black  in 2074

[Trauma-san]

They all can be perceived as racist, it's just all in the eyes of the beholder.  I call my brother things like 'Motherfucker" all the time...... but I'm talking about my own Brother, lol.  If anybody else called him that, I'd beat his ass.  I don't think the word "Nigga" means anything.  It's just a throwaway word people like fat joe have become used to saying, like I've become used to saying "dude" all the time.  I go in Wal-Mart and the guy hands me my change, I say "thanks dude".  I didn't even realize I did it until my brother told me I sound like an idiot.  I don't give a fuck, it's just what I've become accustomed to saying.... Fat Joe's probably the same way, he probably doesn't even realize he says it, so of course he doesn't mean anything by it. 

[W-Side]

^^^The word isn't about skin color. Yes, Fat Joe is light skinned. So was Pun. So is Pitbull. So is B-Real. Big deal. They were raised with Black people, they were treated as niggas. I highly doubt any of them were treated as White Europeans, despite their skin color.

That's the point! So if Bez was treated like a nigga, I don't see why he CAN'T use the term. But, if he wasn't, which I'm sure is the case, he has no reason to use the term.

I agree someone who wasn't raised around blacks and therefore not used to saying it and starts saying it all of a sudden it's pathetic but it's not raciist against blacks if we talkin about people who obviously uses it like "son, dude,.." like white mcs who hang with blacks all the time.
Persons who start saying it all of a sudden (like if Eminem did) would look like wiggas but that's not racist against blacks. Since that person seems to prefer the black race over the white (as he's tryin to be like blacks) he is rather insulting his own race, not the black one.

If a black dude's ashamed of being black and tryin to be white (somehow), who will more likely be mad at him a black or a white person?
yeah.. yet when a white dude's tryin to be black cause he doesn't like his own race as much, it's yet again a black person who's mad him? seems like those who are like being angry

[Kill]

^^^The word isn't about skin color. Yes, Fat Joe is light skinned. So was Pun. So is Pitbull. So is B-Real. Big deal. They were raised with Black people, they were treated as niggas. I highly doubt any of them were treated as White Europeans, despite their skin color.

That's the point! So if Bez was treated like a nigga, I don't see why he CAN'T use the term. But, if he wasn't, which I'm sure is the case, he has no reason to use the term.

okay. if a white, having grown up under the same circumstances can say that, it's no more contradictory, if he can't it is IMO

[bez]

Glad to see everyones different points of view of this.  It just caught my eyes when watching the New York video.  I was like, dam Fat Joe says nigga alot considering he's white.  I knew that of course he was Peurto Rican so therefore he had black/spanish roots but I still don't see how that really makes him any different from a person like me, straight up white, no blacks/spanish people in my family saying nigga. 

Thats simply because, whites called blacks niggas because they where black.  Whites wouldn't go upto a Peutro Rican dood and call him a nigga, simply because he aint black.  Quite a differcult situation to sum up if you ask me.   

[PLANT]

This is a constant debate that there is really no right or wrong answer.  Its fucked up, the world we live in.  Theres almost a double standard for everything these days.  I for one, hang out with a few colored people, and I would never refer to them as "nigga" out of respect.  I dont think its right for someone who is black to call another black guy "nigga" either, but its something that, over time we have gotton used to.

[Darksider]

what rod says pretty much sums it up

[Kill]

another thing is the etymology. "Nigger" comes from the spanish "negro" which means nothing else than "black" (Ras Kass claims it's "spanish for black object, meaning we're not really people", but i think he should get his facts straight cuz it might as well mean "black person" from all i know, los que hablan espanol perfectamente, decidme si no es asi), so "negroe" it is just a reference to color and "nigger" is the pejorative term that evolved from that. but theoretically that would mean it is indeed about your skin, not about how you grew up or anything and hence if you're as white as joey you can't say it. That's just another way to look at it, i'm not saying you necessarily have to