Discrimination and Depressive Symptoms Among Black and Asian American College Students: Shared and Group-Specific Processes of Self-Concept

Objectives: Black and Asian American emerging adults are at higher risk of experiencing racial/ethnic discrimination and related distress. Racial/ethnic discrimination may increase vulnerability for depressive symptoms by diminishing individuals' positive self-concept. While low global self-esteem has been noted as a crucial process linking discrimination and depressive symptoms, it is unclear if it plays a unique role beyond other relevant aspects of one's self-concept: racial/ethnic private regard and centrality. Moreover, although different racial/ethnic groups are known to experience discrimination in distinctive ways, little is known about how relative processes of self-esteem and racial/ethnic identity may differ across these groups. We investigated the generalizability and specificity of discrimination to distress linkages across Asian and Black Americans. Method: Undergraduate Black (N = 109) and Asian American (N = 90) students self-reported racial/ethnic discrimination, depressive symptoms, and self-concept. Results: Global self-esteem indirectly linked the association between discrimination and depressive symptoms among Black Americans beyond the effects of racial/ethnic identity. Only among Black Americans, discrimination was associated with lower private regard. Conclusions: Finding highlight group-specific processes underlying Black and Asian Americans' experiences of discrimination and depressive symptoms. Findings also demonstrate shared processes of discrimination-depressive symptoms linkage across groups and underscore the need to address the pervasive issues of racism and discrimination. Public Significance Statement This study illustrates that Black and Asian American emerging adults may have different self-concept processes through which they experience racial/ethnic discrimination and depressive symptoms. Whereas racial/ethnic discrimination was linked to lower personal self-worth and mood among Asian Americans, for Black Americans discrimination was associated with both lower personal and racial/ethnic self-concept, and lower self-esteem was in turn related to higher depressive symptoms. Regardless of group differences, the negative association between racial/ethnic discrimination and Asian and Black American emerging adults' emotional health was palpable and calls for continued attention.