Americans have long been concerned about the assimilation of immigrant groups. Benjamin Franklin feared that German immigrants would “shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion” (Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc., 1755). Later, Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants were initially described as unwilling, if not unable, to assimilate given their linguistic and cultural distinctiveness from “White” America (Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 1998). Today, the foreign born make up a similar proportion of the population as they did a hundred years ago, with some declaring that contemporary immigrants, especially Latinos, threaten the “cultural and possibly political integrity of the United States” (Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? Challenges to American Identity, 2004, p. 243). Concurrent with the latest increase in immigration is the emergence of multiculturalism as a prominent normative ideology, countering both the more commonly accepted liberal, individualist tradition and the nativist viewpoints that drove earlier responses to immigration (see, e.g., Rogers M. Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America,” American Political Science Review, 1993). Perhaps, then, this newest form of ethnic diversity will indeed lead to a diminution of a common American identity, challenging the notion of e pluribus unum. In American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism, Jack Citrin and David O. Sears evaluate this possibility head-on, connecting the study of individual identity and group salience to preferences for multicultural policies that, according to critics, reify ethnic differences and undermine a common social and political American identity.

This book builds on previous work by the authors, which countered Huntington’s assertions (Citrin et al., “Testing Huntington: Is Hispanic Immigration a Threat to American Identity?” Perspectives on Politics, 2007) and challenged multiculturalism’s contention that ethnic and national identities necessarily conflict (Sears, “Experimental Social Psychology, Broader Contexts, and the Politics of Multiculturalism,” in Eugene Borgida et al., eds., Political Psychology of Democratic Citizenship, 2009). Here, Citrin and Sears evaluate the evidence for three psychological models of intergroup relations: politicized group consciousness, where ethnic group identities are dominant in politics and multiculturalism is the favored ideology of minorities; assimilation, where time spent in the United States will decrease the political importance of ethnic identities; and black exceptionalism, which asserts that a nearly impermeable color line distinguishes African Americans and makes them more supportive of multiculturalism than other groups.

To explore evidence for each of these psychological models, the authors make use of survey data on the identities and opinions of non-Hispanic whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. In this ambitious effort, they draw on national General Social Survey (1994–2004) and American National Election Study (1992–2012) data and the intergroup relations-focused Los Angeles County Social Survey (1994–2002), the latter key in evaluating the opinions of Latinos and Asian Americans. The authors are forthright about the limitations of national survey data for understanding minority opinion, and make a strong case for why the “ethnic cauldron” of Los Angeles is an appropriate context for deriving generalizable knowledge of Latino and Asian immigrant opinions (pp. 46–50). That said, future work should validate Citrin and Sears’s findings for Latinos and Asian Americans with the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS) and 2008 National Asian American Survey (NAAS). The NAAS may be especially useful as few of the book’s analyses were conducted on the Asian American population, even when examining the Los Angeles sample.

Despite these data challenges, Citrin and Sears find convincing evidence of strong attachments to an American national identity regardless of respondent race/ethnicity. Levels of patriotism are similar across ethnic groups, even more so after accounting for African American and Latino immigrants’ perceptions of discrimination (pp. 112, 163, 166). We see more variation in levels of ethnic group consciousness, where whites show the lowest levels of ethnic identity salience, black respondents the most, and Latinos somewhere in between, depending on generation. Yet the “dominant social identities” of minorities include “American,” and very little evidence suggests that stronger ethnic attachments erode national attachments for any group (pp. 163, 267). Thus, the authors conclude that there is more evidence for assimilation and black exceptionalism than politicized group consciousness.

Turning to policy preferences, the authors again find areas of broad consensus. All groups are generally supportive of “soft” forms of multiculturalism, like each ethnic group having “the right to maintain its own unique traditions,” and generally opposes to forms of “hard” multiculturalism, such as prioritizing their racial/ethnic identity over their American identity (pp. 123, 130). Again, politicized group consciousness loses out. Larger differences emerge when support for specific policy items is examined, as in Chapters 7 and 8. Perhaps not surprisingly, black respondents are largely in favor of government programs that would aid African Americans specifically; Latinos (especially the foreign born) display the strongest support for increased, tolerant immigration policies; and whites oppose both sets of policies. Citrin and Sears then analyze policy preferences with reference to respondents’ levels of ethnic and national identity, establishing that whites who display higher levels of patriotic attachment are more likely to oppose multicultural policies, and that support for English-only policies is positively associated with patriotism across groups. Results for African Americans and Latinos vary, depending on the survey used (p. 209), but overall there is little evidence of a “collision between ethnic and national identity” as it relates to support for group-specific policies (p. 221).

In short, Citrin and Sears find more commonality across groups than difference, and that contemporary racial and ethnic diversity is unlikely to cause a fundamental, long-term shift in American political identity. Furthermore, group consciousness and patriotism do not seem to conflict, and arguments that modern accommodations for ethnic groups will lead to the elimination of a national identity appear to be unfounded.

The picture is not entirely rosy, however. In their final empirical chapter (Chapter 9), the authors examine a different source for enduring conflict over American identity: partisanship. Democrats are much more supportive of multicultural policies than Republicans (pp. 257–58), such that conflicts over identity may increase as the parties polarize even further. That said, party accounts for some, though not all, of the relationship between patriotism and opposition to multiculturalism for whites. A disconnect in the analysis is exposed here, as the authors state that differentiation of opinion on multicultural policies is a phenomenon “among the majority whites more than it is a cleavage between whites and minorities” (p. 259), despite acknowledging that minority groups are far more likely to identify as Democrats (pp. 272–73). Later work found that partisan attachments for whites are in part fueled by “concerns” over Latino immigration (Marisa Abrajano and Zoltan L. Hajnal, White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics, 2015), but we have known for some time that perceptions of party support for group-specific policies are a key factor in partisan identification (e.g., Donald Green, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler, Partisan Hearts and Minds, 2002). The authors do mention the relationship among nativism, patriotism, and partisanship (p. 268), but missed an opportunity to fully explore ways in which a white nativist ideology could challenge the cosmopolitan liberal and “soft multicultural” norm that they demonstrate to be valued by minority groups. Such an analysis may have exposed similar racial/ethnic differences in opinion to those highlighted in the empirical chapters, but shifted emphasis away from evaluating whether immigrant nonassimilation and multiculturalism would cause disharmony going forward.

One may also scrutinize Citrin and Sears’s use of patriotism measures to evaluate respondents' strength of American national identity. The authors explain that patriotism is “one facet” of national attachment, and that patriotism may be conceptualized in a variety of ways (pp. 58–59). However, rooting American identity in patriotism is not itself a neutral decision (Deborah J. Schildkraut, “Boundaries of American Identity: Evolving Understandings of ‘Us,’” Annual Review of Political Science, 2014, 454). For instance, Leonie Huddy and Nadia Khatib go beyond the book’s distinction between “blind” and “constructive” patriotism to tease out a measure of national attachment more firmly grounded in social identity theory (“American Patriotism, National Identity, and Political Involvement,” American Journal of Political Science, 2007). Engagement with alternative measures would also allow us to explore how ethnic groups may differ in conceptualizing American identity (e.g., Natalie Masuoka and Jane Junn, The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion, and Immigration, 2013).

Citrin and Sears provide a rigorous and informative analysis of group differences in ethnic and national attachments, uniting the study of individual identity with evaluations of opinion regarding multicultural policies. While many questions remain regarding the trajectory of minority cultural and political incorporation, American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism is a must-read for scholars who seek to understand the increasingly diverse social and political future of the United States.