Well stated, Levi. From what you've disclosed in past posts, your employment background and life experiences and mine bear some similarities. I lived and worked in education and academia in the city of Chicago for many years, a one party, all-Democratic town- the level of racism from all ethnicities and races- was/likely still is- as high or higher than just about any place in the country you can name. Despite record per/pupil spending in education, not only are the majority of public school kids not being trained in functional, job-retaining literacy, our stated policies as disseminated in the classroom concerning race has resulted in severe damage being done. In my own personal experience with the issue, majority kids come to assume minorities have to have help due to some "inferiority", and most minorities (not all Asian groups) assume the "typical" majority class persons are "typically" racist and selfish usurpers and oppressors. President Obama even threw his own Grandmother under the bus, characterizing her as a "typical white person" and all that that type of code-language entails, despite her documented non-racist bonafides:
Having said all that, I agree that both parties exploit human weaknesses to their own advantage, and in the process of shaping thought-processes, employ a constant feedback loop mode that reinforces the politics of division instead of inclusion. Couple that with the current implementation of unwritten, yet still rigid "speech codes"-of completely stifling freedom of thought and expression, and you have the situation we have now- where all the gains we've made since the 60s, resulting in our first African American President, threaten to unravel.