Nina Porzucki

Univision has picked up millions of viewers throughout the World Cup, edging out ESPN in the ratings. But when Felix Sanchez, co-founder of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, started viewing the games on Univision he was surprised at what he heard from the Spanish-speaking commenters.

“Most recently was a characterization related to an Afro-Costa Rican player describing him not by his last name but by the color of skin, calling him ‘moreno,’” said Sanchez. Sanchez noticed other charged words like "greña" being used by broadcasters. “Greña really means messy hair but some individuals think of it as referring to African American hair and also describing it as ‘nappy’ hair,” said Sanchez.

Sanchez posted his linguistic concerns on Facebook and received many, many replies from other American Latinos like himself who were offended by the language being used by sportscasters.

“When English language leaning Latinos watch Spanish language programming there’s a culture clash that occurs because the kind of social progress that we live in, in our mainstream world doesn’t always seem to be reflected in programming that is not English language programming,” said Sanchez.