"How Liberalism and Racism Are Wed"

"I began to explore race as a critical category of political philosophy, and as a product of political institutions. The biggest surprise was my coming to understand that “liberalism” and systematic racism were not antithetical, but inherently compatible, and that systemic racism was even necessary to liberalism. Soon after, I read Charles Mills’s “The Racial Contract,” which supported that view...
I have come to understand identity not as racial, but racialized, through relations, and vulnerability, to the state, which also is the basis of my book. The political framework of liberalism, which promises equality and universal protection for “all,” depends on people to believe those promises, so that racial discrimination, brutality, violence, dehumanization, can be written off as accidental, incidental, a problem with the application of liberal theory rather than part of the deep structure of liberalism...
While we can make corrections to “ideal” liberal theory, these corrections are at base additive. They don’t fundamentally restructure the foundation of liberal society — namely the promise of universal and equal protections alongside a systematic impulse to violence in the name of “civilizing” the heathens, or for the purposes of maintaining “law and order.” At base, this is what the killing of Michael Brown, and the ensuing encounters between the police and protesters in Ferguson, Mo., have exposed...""

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/how-liberalism-and-racism-are-wed/

Identity not racial but racialized - such a useful distinction.
TBH, philosophy has always been a little opaque to me - I feel like I am stepping into a conversation that started in a bunch of college philosophy courses I never took - but I find myself nodding along to the idea that liberalism doesn't address racism/sexism that isn't on an individual level. But also, that might totally not be what she is talking about.

(Credit to KM)