Apes and monkeys are both primates, and are part of the same primate suborder so really I don't understand you need for me to figure out the difference, but in the realm of this argument I do not see the difference.
Is curious Obama racist? The point of that tshirt was to show how Obama is the second least qualified person to ever become president, if you take into account how long they served in senate/congress/governor. It is not meant to be taken as a racial issue, that somehow Obama looks like Curious George, but he is acting like Curious George.
Also, yes less educated people have the right to be offended, but no way does that justify it being offensive. Obama is running for public office, these pictures of him being compared to monkeys obviously did not hurt his campaign.
Obama realizes what they are, and takes them as they are, people look like monkeys/apes and cartoonist/newspapers/anybody has the right to make fun of him whole heartily about this.
I detract, after a quick look at snopes it seems you were partly right, it seems the white name was from the white wash finish given to it to keep it from deteriorating. Regardless of that information, what I said doesn't change much.