The words for what you describe is cognitive dissonance. I encounter it all the time in my debates with my black brothers and sisters. When I point out that the Democratic Party is the party that had as part of it's Party PLATFORM from 1840-1860 the defense of slavery, or that they are the party of Jim Crow, the KKK, lynchings, poll taxes, Black Codes, and opposition to Reconstruction, the Great Society Welfare State that destroyed the 2 parent black family and that the GOP WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE 134TH, 14TH, AND 15TH AMENDMENTS, the first black US congressmen, senators and southern state legislators, every peice of foundational civil rights legislation from 1863-1973, and that MLK was a registered Republican they often find such truth so cotravenes their former indoctrination that they cannot process it and just tune it out.
It is an endlessly frustrating and maddening reality. The black community MUST start accepting responsibility for most of that which is negative about it's contemporary plight.
Good history lesson,Frank.
I think what turned the black community away from the GOP was the Goldwater fiasco of 1964 and the fact that he voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.That unwise action allowed Johnson and the big government Democrats to claim the high moral ground and to self-righteously point to the GOP as"racists".
Goldwater himself was not a white supremist.Unfortunately,many white Southerners were attracted to him mistakenly believing that he was a pro-segregationist so his whole campaign was tainted by these people.
I think blacks then jumped to the conclusion that Republican=Bigot and that distorted image stuck in the black collective consciousness.