Suarez has since apologised but Liverpool's support for him has been misplaced - their show of solidarity in wearing Suarez T-shirts before one Premier League game was so misguided that it made the club look as though it supported racism, even though it is a signatory and active member of the movement to boot racism out of British sport.
Suarez has form too. In the 2010 World Cup, he deliberately used a hand to stop a goal being scored and then celebrated when the resulting penalty was missed.
When he was captain of Ajax in Holland, he bit an opponent, leading to one media outlet labelling him the "cannibal of Ajax". Lily white he ain't, if you'll pardon the term.
All Liverpool needed to do was apologise, say that Suarez didn't mean it how it sounded and he would almost certainly have escaped with less than an eight-week ban.
Instead, the club has only succeeded in persuading many football fans that they are a club for whom their anthem You'll Never Walk Alone has taken on darker meaning when it comes to racism.
This has happened at a time when England captain John Terry is facing criminal charges over an alleged racist slur made towards Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand.
The Chelsea centre-half, who strongly denies any wrongdoing, was caught on camera confronting Ferdinand six minutes from time in Chelsea's 1-0 defeat. The England captain was seen shouting abusive words at Ferdinand, and he has admitted shouting the phrase "f------- black c---".
Terry has strongly denied that the context was racist or intended to cause offence; he says he used the phrase in the context of denying that he had used the term in a previous exchange with Ferdinand. Whatever that means.
Even granting the presumption of innocence, it is difficult to see how Terry - even if cleared - will enjoy a good relationship with Rio Ferdinand, his fellow England defender with whom Terry plays in close proximity and who is Anton's brother.
Add to that the bumbling drivel of Fifa president Sepp Blatter who, asked if he felt there was still racism on the pitch, said: "I would deny it. There is no racism. Maybe one of the players has a word or gesture which is not the correct one but the one who is affected by that, he should say that 'this is a game'.
"We are in a game and, at the end of the game, we shake hands, and this can happen because we have worked so hard against racism and discrimination... on the field of play, sometimes you say something that is not very correct but then, at the end of the game, the game is over and you have the next game when you can behave better."
Ah, Sepp. Like an ostrich, he sticks his head in the sand, thereby exposing his thinking parts.
He might be a consummate politician, able to be re-elected as president of Fifa when all available evidence pointed to him being gently led outside and left alone with a revolver, a pen and a blank sheet of paper - but, even then, he'd probably only have come back in with a bullet hole in his foot.
Getting back to Suarez, it is comforting to know that such incidents mostly do not take place in New Zealand. No one would be daft enough to say that New Zealand sport and society is free of racism. Of course it isn't. But we do seem to have absorbed, as a nation and as the peoples who inhabit it, that the colour of the skin is not a subject for abuse or even comment in sport.
You have to go back to May 2010 to find a racism storm - and then it was only Andy Haden's misguided contention that the Crusaders used an "only three darkies" rule in selecting their team. Rugby has in fact been a bit of a crusader in this regard. Comments like "black", "honky" and other racial taunts that would be deeply inappropriate if used as a taunt are, instead, sometimes used as a term of endearment or as gentler joshing between members of rugby teams.
Rugby - including British rugby - does not seem to have an issue with matters of colour or race. Maybe it's the "war" syndrome where people are slung together in a tough situation which tends to forge friendships, overshadowing mere details like skin colour.
Maybe the problem in Britain is that society as a whole has never really come to grips with Britain's enlightened immigration policies.
Certainly the chants from the terraces seem to mirror what must be a societal discomfort in a country where racially-inspired murders are, if not common, then not rare either.
But that doesn't explain the Spanish taunting of black players, nor the Bulgarians - whose fans shamefully taunted England's black players in a recent international.
Maybe it's just that New Zealand is a small country, able to integrate such notions as racial equality faster and more smoothly than a big nation. If so, we can be thankful.
