Affirmative action and political correctness were the twin pillars of the second constitution. They were what civil rights was. They were not temporary. Affirmative action was deduced judicially from the curtailments on freedom of association that the Civil Rights Act itself had put in place. Political correctness rested on a right to collective dignity extended by sympathetic judges who saw that, without such a right, forcing the races together would more likely occasion humiliation than emancipation.
