Who is racist? More myths and facts about the ‘party of white supremacy’

My last post demonstrated that, contrary to popular belief, Democrats, not Republicans, opposed virtually every civil rights advancement since the Civil War era. A related historical myth nearly as seldom examined is that, around the 1960s, liberal Democrats pushed racist “conservative” Democrats out of their party and over to the GOP, where racism has since taken its natural refuge.

Who is Ignorant?

A couple years ago, Nicholas Kristoff, a liberal writer for The New York Times, observed that conservatives know the left better than liberals know the right:

One academic study asked 2,000 Americans to fill out questionnaires about moral questions. In some cases, they were asked to fill them out as they thought a “typical liberal” or a “typical conservative” would respond. 

Moderates and conservatives were adept at guessing how liberals would answer questions. Liberals, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal,” were least able to put themselves in the minds of their adversaries and guess how conservatives would answer.

He then candidly confessed that he needed the help of a book to “demystify the right.” So why is it that conservatives understand liberals better than the reverse?