Looking for hate in all the wrong places

OK class, repeat after me:
"Monkey is not a racist word in Australia."

It's not, in general. There is, however, a long history of "monkey" being used as a term of racial derision in Britain and continental Europe against people of African or Caribbean heritage, most prominently on the football field. Andrew Symonds, born in Birmingham of Jamaican parents, and an immigrant to Australia as a child, comes into this category.

Whatever clowning about Harbhajan Singh was up to at the SCG on Sunday afternoon, it may have been stirring, or it may have been answering back to the crowd. Or it may have been nothing at all. Certainly ICC match referee Jeff Crowe was not interested.

And neither should we be.