Democrats spent the first century of this country’s existence refusing to treat black people like human beings, and the second refusing to treat them like adults.

After fighting the Civil War because they wanted to keep enslaving black people, the Democrats then subjected newly freed black Americans to vicious, humiliating Jim Crow laws and Ku Klux Klan violence. They lost to Republicans both times, so the Democrats set about frantically rewriting their own ugly history.

Step 1: Switch “Democrat” to “Southerner”;

Step 2: Switch “Southerner” to “conservative Democrat”;

Step 3: Switch “conservative Democrat” to “conservative.”

Contrary to liberal folklore, the Democratic segregationists were not all Southern — and they were certainly not conservative. They were dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrats on all the litmus-test issues of their day.

All but one remained liberal Democrats until the day they died. That’s the only one you’ve ever heard of: Strom Thurmond.

As soon as abortion is relegated to the same trash heap of history as slavery has been, liberals will be rewriting history to make Democrats the pro-lifers and Republicans the pro-choicers. That’s precisely what they’ve done with the history of race in America.

In addition to lying in the history books, liberals lied on their personal resumes. Suddenly, every liberal remembered being beaten up by a 300-pound Southern sheriff during the civil rights movement.

Among the ones who have been caught falsely gassing about their civil rights heroism are Bob Beckel, Carl Bernstein and Joseph Ellis. (Some days, it seems as if there are more liberals pretending to have been Freedom Riders than pretending to be Cherokees!)

In the 1950s and ’60s, Democrats were running segregationists for vice president, slapping Orval Faubus on the back and praising George Wallace voters for their “integrity.” (That was Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in The New York Times.)

But the moment the civil rights struggle was over, liberals decided to become black America’s most self-important defenders.

Of course, once we got the Democrats to stop discriminating against blacks, there was no one else doing it. So liberals developed a rich fantasy life in which they played Atticus Finch and some poor white cop from Brooklyn would be designated Lester Maddox (racist Democrat, endorsed by Jimmy Carter).

White journalists who didn’t know any actual black people (other than Grady the maid) became junior G-men searching for racists under every bed, requiring a steady stream of deeply pompous editorials.

You will never see anything so brave as a liberal fighting nonexistent enemies.

Liberals drove the entire country crazy with their endless battles against imaginary racists, to make up for their having been AWOL during the real fight over civil rights.

Throughout this period, every black-on-white crime became a re-enactment of “To Kill a Mockingbird”; every cop who shot a black perp was Bull Connor; and every alleged racist incident was instantly presumed true, no matter how preposterous.

When it turned out the hate crime was a hoax, the cop was being mugged and the black kid was guilty, the whole story would just quietly disappear from the news, as if the media were reading a bedtime story to a child, whispering the ending and tiptoeing out of the room.

Then came the O.J. verdict.

Millions of Americans watched as a mostly black jury acquitted an obviously guilty black celebrity and saw black America cheer the verdict. The sight of black law students whooping and applauding O.J.’s acquittal had the same emotional impact as watching Palestinians celebrate the 9/11 attack.

Overnight, the white guilt bank — once thought “too big to fail” — was shut down. Henceforth, instead of producing stuttering embarrassment, liberal moral intimidation on race produced only eye-rolling. With that, America became a much healthier country, especially for black people.

Without nonsense claims of racist “code words” to stop them, Republicans were finally able to implement long-sought reforms on crime and welfare. The unqualified success of Rudy Giuliani’s crime policies in New York saved tens of thousands of black lives. Welfare reform was such a stunning success that Bill Clinton later claimed all credit for it.

Blacks had won the final civil rights battle: The right to be treated like adults. Even liberals ceased their oohing and ahhing over every little thing any black person did.

But the post-O.J. paradise came to a crashing halt with the appearance of Barack Obama.

Obama allowed liberals to return to accusing Americans of being racists and get the most liberal president America has ever seen at the same time.

The only firm evidence that there are any actual racists left in America is the fact that so many whites voted for Obama as some sort of racial penance. More white people voted for Obama in 2008 than had voted for any Democratic presidential candidate in nearly 40 years.

They must have felt guilty about something. Not harboring any racist impulses, I was free to vote Republican.

Now that Obama is up for re-election, liberals are back to their old tricks. A nation with more child pornographers than racists — a nation that’s already elected a (half) black president once — is suddenly said to be bristling with racists again!

My new book, out this week, “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama,” reminds us that nothing good has ever come of Americans capitulating to liberals’ racial bullying, especially not for black people. Never. Don’t make the same mistake again, America.

COPYRIGHT 2012 ANN COULTER

DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK