If the player was white then it'd be ok, though, right?

My point is that it was a phrase people used. It wasn't used on black people exclusively. Examples have been given in this thread of the phrase being used during that era, regardless of race. You've skipped over this and saw "black people" and "monkey" used, and you linked those together. You can argue that you're the one being racist, but I'm not going there.

I'm bowing out of this thread. This is a mess

Monkey was thrown around a lot in that era to mean a person generally. Pixies had a song in this era called Monkey Gone to Heaven, for example.

This is why it's not doing anyone any good to use 2023 glasses on language from yesteryear in most cases. We lost the context long ago. I only know this from being an 80s kid and remembering how we used to speak. It's interesting how language has evolved, and I think it should be left at that, personally, as a mixed race person myself.

I don't care much about Billy Packer and don't know the guy personally, obviously, but I also think a racist wouldn't choose a career like his, one where he must interact with many black people daily, if he really were such a thing. I just think if this phrase is all we have for proof then the bar should be higher

He didn't call him a monkey. He used a phrase that was popular at the time and then you used your Racism Detector decoder ring 40 years later and got upset about it.

There's enough problems in the world without inventing more

If you're the one calling someone racist then I think it should be you providing the proof

That's a turn of phrase that's outdated so people don't know it anymore but it was definitely a thing people said and it wasn't racial. I don't know Packer's thoughts or anything, of course, but if that's your smoking gun then it's not much