Where has modern Australia sunk to when a two-times Brownlow Medallist, dual premiership winner and Australian of the Year faces being run out of the game he loves, and the game he's been an ornament to, because of relentless mob-driven racism?

Few issues in recent memory, in sport or elsewhere for that matter, have been as divisive as the persistent booing of Sydney Swans star Adam Goodes.

The fact it's "divisive" rather than roundly condemned is downright shameful.

Booing is not new in sport.

We as sports fans love to hate our villains, the better they are the greater the vitriol.

It's all part of the theatre of sport which provides us real life action heroes and their various counter foes. But as uncomfortable as it is for a lot of people to accept, the booing of Goodes is coming from a particularly dark place.

It's become personal.

The excuses used to justify the booing: Goodes "stages" for free kicks (for which he's been awarded just 11) or that crowds always "boo the best players" on opposing sides simply don't hold water.

Goodes has played the same way for his entire career and yet the booing is only a recent phenomenon.

He was roundly booed at Subiaco last week, a reception he never received in all his years playing there, including several seasons when the Swans-Eagles rivalry was at its height.

The 'I'm not racist but ... brigade' can point to these excuses - and that's all they are - to justify their behaviour but let's call it what it is: a mob using the coward's cloak of anonymity to take a free kick at an "uppity" black man who doesn't know his place.

The same goes for people who point to Goodes' refusal to accept being racially vilified during Indigenous Round in 2013. People have used the fact that the perpetrator was a 13-year-old girl as another excuse to put the boot in to a man who was the victim.

People say the other 70 Aboriginal players aren't being vilified - the fact is they are. What is the AFL public saying to those other 70 players with their persistent attack on Goodes?

Let's remember that the AFL does not have a proud history in this area going back to 1993 and Nicky Winmar pointing proudly to his black skin in the face of racial vilification from fans.

We like to think we've progressed since then but it only takes an episode like this to show how quickly nearly two decades of progression can be set back.

It took a long time for Goodes to respond to vitriol. People lined up to condemn the Aboriginal 'war dance' delivered in the direction of Carlton fans during this year's Indigenous Round as aggressive or provocative.

That someone like Eddie Maguire would declare in the aftermath that Goodes should have "educated" people about the dance before performing it is farcical. Maguire's suggestion that Goodes be used to promote the musical King Kong shows it's not Goodes or most of the wider public that needs educating.

The sad fact is Goodes forecast his fate not long after being named Australian of the Year.

"I think what we're going to find [racism] is going to get worse before it gets better," he said in May, 2014.

Why? Because Goodes knew then that he was not going to be another smiling Aboriginal face of Indigenous Round, a "good role model" who makes the rest of us feel a little less conscious of the more shameful periods of our history.

More than any other recent recipient of the honour, Goodes has used the office to actually start a discussion that needed to be had. The fact he was willing to sacrifice parts of his reputation to do so makes him all the more admirable

It's slightly more confronting than Lee Kernaghan singing about a ute and, while he has been condemned as promoting division, the real fact is he has merely dared confront the division that already existed; as determined as wider society is to ignore it.

Goodes won't play against Adelaide on Saturday and is reportedly contemplating walking away for good. If that becomes the case the shame will not be his ... it will be ours.