Conservative opponents of multiculturalism declared equality already achieved to dismantle affirmative action.

Evidence

The efforts of multicultural activists, not surprisingly, were fiercely challenged and resisted by conservatives who dubbed the multicultural movement the “politically correct” (PC) movement. They claimed that multicultural activists were jeopardizing free speech by insisting on “politically correct” language and objected to being called racist or sexist if they expressed themselves freely. They also objected to curricular changes, claiming that multiculturalism posed a threat to a unified national identity that emerged from studying the history of achievements of white men. Most important, they insisted that the goals of equality had been reached and that antiracist policies were no longer needed. They used a post-race argument against affirmative action policies in the 1990s, resulting in a series of legal cases that ended affirmative action in some states. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 94

Categorization

• XREF: Post-race argument parallels the reader’s thread on how language and framing get weaponized — echoes the ‘noble rather than racist’ mechanism in the following paragraph.