The issues are made (deliberately) confusing through a couple of sleights of hand that operate in politics...
You see that sleight of hand being made plain, in part, in the "survey" showing who is racist and who is not...
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while the LABELS applied in politics today are purposefully deceptive in relation to the issues.
We know that the differences between liberals and conservatives... is not a difference that defines that one set of ideas and beliefs as naturally racist, while the other set are naturally not racist. However, if politicians can sell that idea... and gain an advantage from it, they will.
Race, obviously, is not an inherently ideological issue. The color of your skin might well condition how you perceive many things based on your experience of the world and others in it... but, it shouldn't have much impact on how you perceive "ultimate truth" ? However, race can easily enough be converted into one of those "issues of the day" that politicians use to create division... in order to exploit divisions as a distraction from the value in fundamental ideas... without having any meaningful interest in the divisions they foster for any other reason than exploiting them. Politicians seek advantage where they find it... and discard the elements they claim as "fundamental" when it suits their purpose, just as readily.
In politics, at least, the distinctions made between "liberal" and "conservative" policies, as those are attached to and used in defining party brands, are often distinctions of convenience, taken on for political reasons and no other, while not being about attachment to fundamental principles.
So, in that context, it is clearly useful to try to understand what is fundamental, and what is not ?
Race divisions in politics... used to mean Democrats up north were (classical) liberal populists, like Franklin, Jefferson, and Jackson, who favored democracy and free markets, and who were opposed to corporate monopolies, central banks, and the growth of Federal power. Democrats down south were far more socially conservative, white, racist, southern plantation owners. Republicans were northerners, dogmatically religious, do-gooders and abolitionists... who favored the growth and expanding power of the Federal government at the expense of the states sovereignty and rights. That alignment held through the civil war... and really only began to change in the 1950's, as a function of purposeful political strategy. Then, many elected Democrats who were KKK members... were suddenly re-postured as being the champions of the underdogs, as that was re-defined along racial lines. And, under Nixon, Republicans who had fought a war to abolish slave holders rights to own people as property, opted to adopt a "southern strategy" that was designed and intended to win by appealing to the southern white vote that Democrats were abandoning.
Having been defeated in the civil war, southern Democrats didn't quit being racist demagogues on principle... they just undertook an effort to switch sides in the race war as an item of political convenience... which is why you saw Democrat George Wallace barring access to the University of Alabama... blog.al.com while the Federal government called out the National Guard to force the gates open... at the direction of Democrat President Kennedy, and, later, Johnson. Why do Kennedy conspiracy theories focus on ideology instead of race ?
Anyway... the point is... race is not a fundamental issue in politics... but it is often used by being made into an element of team affiliation... with Democrats still exploiting it and seeking to foster division along racial lines.
Race was made a fundamental issue only by the insistence as the Civil War approached, that states rights trumped the Constitution in guaranteeing states the right to impose slavery as an institution... but, the Democrats lost that argument in the Civil War. Today, people are not the property of others. But, the Civil War also DID NOT covert us from being a free people... into being the property of the Federal Government.
The Democrats, today... have surrendered on the slavery issue, but only as far as it considers the individual right to own another person as property... while still insisting that having surrendered that as an individual right, or the right of a state to choose, that there must still be a collective form of ownership of people. That unthinking and unstated view is wholly consistent with the EUROPEAN concept of national sovereignty... but wholly inconsistent with the AMERICAN concept of a Constitutionally limited government, inviolable individual rights... with the people (and not a King, a committee, or an Aristocracy) as the self appointed sovereigns.
That Democrats were wrong about their advocacy of owning slaves... makes them just as wrong, today, in advocating an shift from private ownership to public ownership of people, under the un-American conception of sovereignty... that relegates people to being owned as the property of the government.
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