American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism

Jack Citrin is Heller Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He currently serves as the director of the Institute of Governmental Studies and has previously served as the director of University of California Data and the acting director of the Survey Research Center. Among his publications are Tax Revolt: Something for Nothing in California (with David Sears, 1982), How Race, Immigration and Ethnicity are Shaping the California Electorate (2002), and Ethnic Context, Race Relations, and California Politics (with Bruce E. Cain and Cara Wong, 2000). His work has appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. Two of his articles have won prizes from the American Political Science Association. He is a founding member of the International Society of Political Psychology. David O. Sears is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has twice been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has served as Dean of Social Sciences and as Director of the Institute for Social Science Research at UCLA. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and the president of the International Society of Political Psychology. Among his publications are Social Psychology (twelve editions), Obama's Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America (2010), and more than 150 journal articles and book chapters on psychology and political science.

• Prologue; 1. The challenge of e pluribus unum; 2. The political psychology of identity choice; 3. Contours of American national identity; 4. The ethnic cauldron and group consciousness; 5. Public opinion and multiculturalism's guiding norms; 6. Do ethnic identities and multiculturalism collide with national identities?; 7. Multicultural policies: ethnic consensus and cleavage; 8. The dynamics of multicultural-policy preferences; 9. Multiculturalism and party politics; 10. Conclusion.

'With each new wave of immigrants, the United States must assess whether social cohesion and national identity continue to thrive. In a thoughtful, empirically rich assessment of racial and ethnic group attitudes in the early twenty-first century, Citrin and Sears offer a confident assessment that immigration, diversity, and a growing national respect for multicultural values do not undermine a strong attachment to the nation.' Louis DeSipio, University of California, Irvine