Now, in fact, it was possible for people who had wanted a different racial or sexual order to demand it of the American system without incurring the suspicion that they were working against the country’s national security. To blacks and women, immigrants and gays, it was exhilarating. This minority coalition, pursuing a more or less unpopular set of programs, racked up victories as if it were a righteous majoritarian crusade. In the course of it, these minorities discovered, perhaps to their own surprise, that civil rights law gave them an iron grip on the levers of state power.
