Yes, there were persons who proudly described themselves as racist.

After serving in both World War II and the Korean War, George Lincoln Rockwell worked to peddle hate, founding the American Nazi Party in 1959. Rockwell, who once attended a rally held by the aptly named minister of hate Gerald L. K. Smith, was an ardent believer in white supremacy. He truly believed that were a Zionist plot afoot and claimed that he could recite, from memory, every line of Mein Kampf. In the 1960s, he felt as though the Civil Rights Movement were a Communist scheme: "Those who are trying to help the Negro are engaged in a Castro-Mao-Communist revolution."

Rockwell organized a counter protest to Martin Luther King's campaign in Chicago. King was moving in the direction of his Poor People's Campaign, and Rockwell saw this as an opportunity to organize working-class white. On August 5, 1966, Rockwell's forces met King at Gage Park. While waving Confederate flags and Nazi flags and changing "White Power", the crowd pelted King and the Civil Rights activists with bricks and bottles. Andrew Young remarked on Rockwell's crowd: "The violence in the South always came from a rabble element. But these were women and children and husbands and wives coming out of their homes and becoming a mob--and in some ways it was far more frightening." Rockwell masterminded the crowd, enticing them and directing his stormtroopers. Rockwell was later arrested for disorderly conduct.

Rockwell toured the nation to drum up support for his cause. At lectures at college campuses, he proudly and unabashedly described himself as a racist. For example, after a lecture at Fort Hayes University in Kansas, Rockwell baldly stated "I am a racist." For Rockwell, this was a source of pride.

But George Lincoln Rockwell is not alone in his affirmation of the label racist. Tom Metzger was originally a member of the David Duke led Ku Klux Klan. But Metzeger eventually left Duke's national Klan to form the California Klan. Metzger had political ambitions, and found that Californians were not willing to elect a known Klansman to congress. He left the Klan and tried again, but he only earned 2.8% of the vote. He then formed the White American Political Association (WAPA), but then changed the name in 1983 to the more militant sounding White American Resistance and then to White Aryan Resistance (WAR), because he wanted to exclude Latino/as and Jewish folks and any other non-whites in the US. Any who, in Metzger's own chilling words in 1993:

Are you designing hate material for your community? Yes, I said hate. WAR seems to be the only group around that honestly embraces hate as well as love. Our enemies hate us and we hate them. WAR hates any individual, group or institution that fights racism. Yes racism. I am a full blown racist and I believe in race--and specifically my own race. Anyone that stands in the way of the best interests of my race must be hated with a perfect hatred. At the same time love for ourselves, our families, and our racially conscious associates should be boundless. Reserve love for those that benefit your cause--reserve hatred for those that would sidetrack your mission. Properly thought out forms and focused hate is a great revolutionary ally. If hatred is not your ally, it is an enemy to be feared.

Barry Black, who founded the Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, put it proudly:

Be proud to be white. Be proud of white America stands for. The Ku Klux Klan does not stand for hatred. It stands for heritage. It stands for the love of the white race. I am a racist and I am a prejudiced person and I am proud to be a white supremacists and I have no doubt in my mind. I don't apologize for anything that's happened in the past because the past has a way of repeating itself and it will repeat itself again. American will wake up and the white race will survive and take over--take back what's rightfully ours.

Sources:

Barkun. Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement. 1996.

Dobartz and Shanks-Meile. "White Power! White Pride!" The White Separatist Movement in the United States. 2000

Simonelli. American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. 1999.

I'm not sure what you're asking-- are you asking if there was a time when race theory was seen as a socially-acceptable ideology in the Western world? Yes. Discourses of race developed along with Western science and colonialism starting in earnest in the 18th century, and while overt racism in the vulgar sense (ie. "sub-humans") became increasingly taboo in the early 20th century, and especially into the Cold War, the fundamental tenant of racism is not that such-and-such a group is inferior, but rather, that humanity can be divided cleanly into essentialized races ("Caucasians", "Mongoloids", etc.), each with particular characteristics. This sort of thinking is not supported by genetic research and has been largely discredited by more recent scientific research, however, plenty of people still talk openly about humanity in terms of races.