Social Identity Development and Religious Discrimination Among Muslim American Youth

The present study investigated the development of social identity centrality dimensions (i.e., Muslim, ethnic, and American identity centrality) among Muslim American youth as well as associations between religious discrimination and social identity centrality trajectories. Data were collected once annually from 2015 to 2017 with 220 Muslim American youth (M = 14.20, SD = 0.94) in the Midwest United States (girls = 53.2%; boys = 42.3%; missing = 4.5%). Participants were Arab (62.3%), Somali (15.9%), and African American (8.6%), among other ethnic groups (less than 2%). Latent growth curve models indicated that Muslim and ethnic identity centrality displayed negative trajectories and that American identity centrality increased over time. Surprisingly, religious discrimination was not associated with social identity centrality trajectories. This research suggests that Muslim American youths' minoritized social identities develop similarly, whereas youths' American social identity develops differently than these identities.