Luis Suarez: Breaking Down What He Said to Patrice Evra

What did Suarez say? And what did it really mean?

By now you've heard that on Tuesday an Independent Regulatory Commission, on behalf of the Football Association, has suspended Liverpool forward Luis Suarez eight games and fined him £40,000 for racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra.

For a modern star footballer, £40,000 isn't about to cripple a bank account. The best players make more than that each week.

But eight matches represent more than 20 percent, of the 38-game English Premier League season. Considering that fact, one would think Suarez's crime was extreme.

By pretty much all accounts, Suarez called Evra "negrito" during the match between Liverpool and Manchester United at Anfield on Oct. 15. That the IRC took more than two months to reach its decision suggests that its members struggled to determine whether that word is or is not offensive.

The confusion stems from the claims from some that "negrito" can be used affectionately in South America, from where the Uruaguayan Suarez hails. Liverpool fans have gone crazy while being careful to couch their words with the proper amount of political correctness.

Meanwhile, world football fans have even taken over the Merriam-Webster entry for negrito.

The official definition from that page is, "A member of a people (as the Andamanese) belonging to a group of dark-skinned peoples of small stature that live in Oceania and the southeastern part of Asia."

That's not too helpful, so what we must do is consider intent and context. Suarez has claimed the word was his "way of expressing" himself. But in the heat of competition, opponents don't usually pat each other on the back, muss up each other's hair and utter an affectionate greeting. It's silly to even suggest that.

Instead, in-game chatter between opponents is usually crude and offensive. With that said, though, some things, such as race, are generally considered out of bounds. In my recreational league here in America, I play on a team full of Latin American players against other teams full of Latin American players.

I've never heard anyone say that word, but I have learned Spanish words that reference people's mothers and sexual orientations.

In that case, talk is just talk. But in the Suarez-Evra case, it's about more. Certainly, the word "negrito" doesn't carry the same baggage of hate that the six-letter n-word carries here in America, even to this day.

Still, for a player—or any person—of African heritage, that word, in all of its variations, is hurtful.

While Suarez can claim he was only expressing himself, he must realize that there's nothing Evra could say back to him that would be quite as hurtful. And as a person of non-African descent, Suarez is not in position to decide what is hurtful and what is not.