"How American Am I?": Comparing American Identity among US Black Muslims
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Much sociological attention has focused on Black identity within the United States. Less attention, however, has been given to understanding how immigrant and native-born streams of US Black Muslims articulate American identity, a particularly important empirical gap given the connections among race, religion, and national identity. In this study I ask: how do second-generation American Black Muslims and indigenous Black American Muslims compare in the ways they narrate connections among race, American identity, and Islam? Using data from 31 in-depth interviews with Black Muslims living in Houston, I find that racial double-consciousness complicates American identity for US Black Muslims regardless of immigrant status. While indigenous Black American respondents critique racist US histories and structural inequities, I argue that in certain spaces Muslim identity has the potential to reinforce American identity for indigenous Black American Muslims. For second-generation respondents, however, American identity is reinforced through immigrant status. Second-generation respondents compare their own experiences living in the United States with that of their immigrant parents. This study makes a case for “triple-consciousness” to explain the way Black Muslims perceive their racial, religious, and national identities within the context of the United States and the Muslim American community. More broadly, I demonstrate how intersecting identities can fuel micro and macro processes that can shift the way American identity is understood.
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Ferguson, Jauhara. ""How American Am I?": Comparing American Identity among US Black Muslims." (2021) Master’s Thesis, Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111583.