Your point is solid, but I think you missed a great underlying issue -- a cornerstone of liberalism is an abstract form of racism, but by far the most harmful of all. Calling someone the n-word is extremely offensive, but really demonstrates an excess of ignorance on the part of the perpetrator.

Affirmative action, on the other hand, shows an excess of deviousness, as it is perhaps the biggest setback for the cause of all minorities. I fully understand the desire to eradicate racism in all forms, but lowering the standard and making exceptions for others based solely on the color of their skin merely demonstrates condescension and a lack of faith in said minority's inherent and equal abilities.

Aside from the obvious social critique, there's an economic disadvantage to affirmative action. In a free-market economy, in which everyone -- individuals and corporations, are driven by profit and self-preservation, corporations cannot afford to higher anyone but the most qualified, regardless of race, religion, orientation, etc. I cannot picture a less racist scenario than this -- people attain wealth and status not by the color of their skin, but entirely by their ability to function as part of a corporate entity. This sounds soul-less, but that is a different debate.

Even more sinister, I believe, is cultural stereotyping that is enforced not, as is popularly believed, by the conservative, but by the liberal, as part of an agenda that entails retaining power. I'm not claiming there are not racist conservatives; in fact I would wager that there are many more blatantly racist conservatives than blatantly racist liberals. A conservative stance on negative stereotypes, however, is disdain toward those who fall into the stereotype and praise for those who don't. Do you suppose the typical Republican despises Condoleeza Rice? With few exceptions, the answer is no, because Rice does not fall into the popular negative image of African-American urban culture.

Liberalism not only tolerates people who fall into these negative stereotypes, but embraces them and encourages them retain these negative traits regardless of harm to themselves and others. People who rise above these degrading caricatures of what ethnic culture SHOULD be, by obtaining education and success, are ridiculed for "betraying their culture" and are accused of "acting white."

Another growing concern is the popular prominence of the "white" stereotype, particularly as a negative. Pop culture ridicules people for speaking in a formal manner, for having an education, for having wealth, etc. I fail to see how these are bad things. In fact, I think anyone in their right mind strives to obtain this level of success, and it isn't exclusive to white people.

As a white male, I acknowledge that there are certainly dire and disadvantaged situations that people must struggle throughout their lives to overcome. As the child of drug addict, raised in the slums of Tacoma, I can also tell you that these disadvantages are not restricted to any particular race. Having pulled myself up, by the bootstraps, so to speak, and having zero support from what remains of my family, I have stayed in school entirely by my own means. It CAN be done, by anyone who has the drive and the motivation. Exceptions were not made for me because I was white -- in fact, throughout my life I have always been mistaken for Hispanic. I've met and overcome more hardships than many of my ethnic peers, and I'm stronger because of it. Because no one MADE exceptions for me, I was forced to fend for and succeed for MYSELF.

I think that pointing fingers at which party is more racist in the vitriolic dual-party system that unfortunately is the status quo of American government is entirely the wrong way to go about ENDING racism. People are racist, but capitalism is blind. The best approach is to give everyone equal opportunity to succeed, NO exceptions.

Neither party is openly prone toward racism. One party does have a history of advocacy for "racialism" a more archaic but often more truthful term. From the Anti-Federalist movement from which it sprang, the Democratic Republican, (later just Democratic), Party became the voice for those factions whose voice was diminished, first by the rise of Federalism and the Constitutional Convention, and later by the morphing of the old Whig Party, the abolitionist movement and the protectivist interests of the growing manufacturing economy in the north. The DRs became the advocates of local and states rights in oposition to the federalization that only grew with the Bill of Rights, in spite of the the neglected 10th Amendment and other restrictions on governmental interference. By the 1860s the defense of regional autonomy had grown into a defense of the slave-enhanced economy of the south and set the Democrats overwhelmingly in opposition to emancipation. With the election of Lincoln and the radical leadership of Thadeus Stevens the south rightly saw the probable imposition of federal will upon their local standards and the Civil War resulted.
It is wrong to assume that the South was motivated by "racism." If "racism" implies an unreasonable animosity toward members of another racial group, that is unlikely to have been the case for most Southerners. "Racialism" the term in use at the time, implies a belief in the superiority of one racial group over another, but does not necessarily im[ply animosity. (One may believe that the species Homus is superior in important ways to the species Cannis without implying that humans have an animosity toward dogs.) In the post-Civil War era slavery gave way to segregation, discrimination and the periodic terror campaigns of groups like the Ku Klux Klan. In these activities it was clear that the Democratic Party continued to represent the advocates of state's rights, the rights which enabled the south to maintain such practices on an institutional level. The Dixiecrats remained a key element of any Democratic Party successes well into the 1960s when they were finally found at odds with another growing faction in the Democratic coalition, the post-WWII, King, Farmer, Abernathy, etc. leadership trend in the Negro civil rights movement.
While who knows what Johnson or Nixon might have done, Kennedy became President and Robert Kennedy certainly pushed for support of the political campaign to impose federal Civil Rights standard throughout the country.
This transition in the Democratic Party rightly rid them of the title of 'defenders of institutional racialism,' but it did not magically transform the Republican Party into that which it had opposed for more than a century.
The same values that created the Republican Party as an opponent to social injustice remain unchanged. What has changed is its relationship to its opposition.
The Civil War was followed by a long period of Republican domination in the Federal government. But the Democrats found room for growth as advocates, not only for regional control, but for the rapidly growing legions of the organized disenfranchised, women, labor, elements of Negro-America and others.
With some exceptions they fared wel but not triumphantly until the Great Depression and the rise of national corporativism. Corporativism had been a rising social theory for one hundred years before the Depression, but it was the leadership vacuum left by WWI, the trauma of the Great Influenza Epidemic and the international economic collapse that gave it the fertile ground to grow. As the weave in which Keyensian economic theory was but a single thread unfolded, it swept the world in a few decades achieving almost complete domination. National Corporativism is not concisely enunciated anywhere by a luminary like Smith or Marx,. it is simply the proposition that societies should be run as a cooperative venture between labor and capital with government acting as a referee. To do so, government must acquire the power to control things while preserving the benefits theat will satisfy both capital and labor. In Germany this became the Third Reich, in Italy the Facists, in Russia Stalinism and in the United States, the New Deal.
Through National Corporativism it became possible for the Government to take on the responsibility of making sure the people had food and shelter. This role as care-taker to the people was a natural vehicle to attract the disenfranchised. What they were unable to obtain through democratic process they could now obtain through the new view of the federal government as the standard setter, lifting up the begrudging regions.
In this process, the Democratic Party ghained a new reputation as the advocates of the downtrodden and disenfranchised. What gave them that reputation was the willingness to use Social-Corporativist, (Liberal), reasoning to achieve their ends. In doing so, they engaged in a revolution that challenges the essential premises upon which the democratic-republic of the Federalists was founded. Needing to provide fixes and benefits, the Democrats needed power. The means of achieving that power have erroded the checks and balances on power established by the Federalists. The Republicans oppose many of the Democrat's civil rights initiative as destructive of that balance, and therefore, of the stability of the system which gives us this freedom. To the Democrats they appear to be foot-draggers in the road to progress. To the Republicans, the Democrats appear to be foolishly rushing toward a cliff, unaware that the protections they destroy will be destroyed still in some future date when they are desperately needed.