He is the director of the Institute of Governmental Studies and a professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
He added that "their obsession with symbolic racism is wholly unwarranted, both analytically and from a public policy perspective," and he concluded by dismissing the book as "hard to read, because it is written in the language of social psychology and social science jargon.
"[3] In American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism, published in 2014, Citrin and Sears studied multiculturalism in relation to civic nationalism versus nativism and patriotism versus chauvinism, and found that most American citizens were patriotic civic nationalists.
[1] In a review for Contemporary Sociology, Rhys H. Williams concluded, "This is an optimistic book for those who share a liberal conception of American national identity, culture, and public life" and he added that "they recognize how those most disadvantaged by our current political economy, most specifically African Americans, are at least "on board" with rosy assessments of the nation.
"[4] However, in a 2017 interview, Citrin admitted that this may have changed due to the "hardening of differences in the political parties.