An Examination of Ethnic-Racial Identity and U.S. American Identity among Black, Latino, and White Adolescents

ABSTRACT

In the United States (U.S.), adolescent identity development occurs within a socio-historical context characterized by an ethnic-racial hierarchy, as well as an unequal distribution of power and privilege. The current study examined the associations among two ethnic-racial identity components (i.e., exploration, resolution), perceived ethnic-racial discrimination, and U.S. American identity among White, Black, and Latino adolescents in the U.S. A cross-sectional sample of self-identified White, Black, and Latino adolescents (N = 1,378) completed self-administered surveys (M_age = 16.16 years; SD = 1.12, 52.8% female). A sequential model-building approach using multiple-group path analysis revealed that both exploration and resolution were positively associated with U.S. American for White and Black adolescents, but no association emerged for Latino adolescents. Furthermore, among Black adolescents, the association between exploration and U.S. American identity was moderated by perceived ethnic-racial discrimination, such that these two identity dimensions were positively associated only among those who reported higher levels of discrimination. Overall, ethnic-racial identity and U.S. American identity were more strongly associated among White and Black adolescents compared to Latino adolescents. Future research is needed to better understand the intersections between ethnic-racial identity and U.S. American identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic-racial identity
• U.S. American identity
• ethnic-racial minority
• adolescents
• ethnic-racial discrimination

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to the youth who participated in the study. We thank the project graduate students, research assistants, and research staff for their assistance is conducting this investigation. This research was supported by the Latino Resilience Enterprise of the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We use the term ethnic-racial discrimination, as this captures individuals’ experiences of unfair treatment or marginalization based on their membership to a particular racial or ethnic group (Umaña-Taylor, 2016a; Smedley & Smedley, 2005).

2. Although a majority of Black youth were African American, some were recent African immigrants.

3. The initial unconstrained model allowed all associations to vary across groups and was a just-identified model (Model 1). The association between gender and U.S. American identity was set equal to zero to reduce model complexity. A chi-square difference test indicated no difference between the more parsimonious model and the initial model, and thus the more parsimonious model became the baseline model to which all other models were compared.

4. For both Black and Latino adolescents, the model that constrained this association to zero was compared to a model without this constraint. The change in chi-square suggested no significant differences between the models for Black adolescents [Δχ2(1) =.21, p =.65] and Latino adolescents [Δχ2(1) =.10, p =.75].