By By Aisha Sharif, Focus North High School, OH
What do teenagers think of being labeled as one word? The YouTube channel, Fuller Youth Institute, posted an experiment where teenagers had to choose only one word to describe themselves. Later they were asked how they felt about being identified by one word. Most of the teenagers said they felt pressured just to fit into one label and didn’t want to be seen as just that identity. Discussions about immigrants in the U.S have been quite controversial. On one side, hate crimes against immigrants grow, while on the other side, many first-generation immigrants are trying to bring community, love, and peace to the U.S. As a daughter of immigrants growing up in a multicultural family, I’ve seen the hate towards my mom first hand. As a result of seeing anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant discrimination, I, and other teenagers from multicultural families, tend to feel more pressure from peers to fit in and this affects teenage mental health.
Somalis tend to work together as a community and make the best of what we have despite what little we have. Ifrah Mahamud Magan and Debrah K. Padgett add to this in their article “Home Is Where Your Root Is,” noting that, “community is very important. It is what remained for Somalis to survive 26 years after the war” (Magan 105). For people who lost everything material in a war, the power of human friendships and connection is something that can never be taken away. Recently, my mother had a knee and hand injury and could not leave the house. However, she had many people come over with food and medicine for her and stay to talk and comfort her. One of our Somali friends even took her to the hospital. We did not reach out to ask our community for help, but when people heard that my mother was struggling to take care of herself and us the children they knew to show up. That is just what we do; we show up for each other.
Another reason why we value community so highly is because many Somalians in my parent’s generation lost everything in the Somali Civil War in the 1990s. As a result, we do not have the same credentials or proof of education that many U.S. citizens rely on for jobs. In fact, “refugees from Somalia are less likely to have a college degree compared to the general U.S population” (Magan 102-103). The result is that Somali immigrants don’t have much money to offer but they have more time to help people.
This is true in many of our cultural practices, and it is tied into Islam, the religion that I, and many Somali people practice. Magan and Padgett interviewed many Somali refugees in the U.S., and they often mentioned shared religion as a factor in community (103). In our Columbus Somali community, my mom is a well-known and respected person, and she has a lot of people come to her about issues of their own. If someone was ever in need of money or a place to stay, she would offer this to them. Growing up with these community expectations has taught me to welcome strangers and help them because they may not have someone else to turn to.
This idea of community is especially seen in Somali-U.S. immigrants trying to adapt to Western cultures that are different from their homeland. Education Professor, Martha Bigelow, notes that “Somalis and other Muslims in Western societies often endure Islamophobia, which is cultivated by much ignorance and fueled by a powerful public discourse that depicts all Muslims as extremists and fundamentalists. Children and Adolescents are not immune to this discourse, nor do they passively accept it.” (Bigelow 27).
Children of African American immigrants are often lumped in with Black Americans and even though they are very different cultures many immigrant teens feel pressure to adopt “American” teen trends by fitting in with Black American culture. This may involve “adopting, on a surface level, the fashion, music, language, and gestures of African American peers” (Bigelow 28). Many teenagers of Somali immigrants are encouraged to both “fit in” and not be a “stereotype” of a “new immigrant” and this pressure can be very destructive if one is not careful with it.
Growing up in a Somali American household was like living in two different cultures and worlds for me. I had specific cultural expectations at home that were unique to my African Muslim culture. When I went to school, however, I felt I had to act in a certain way to make friends and earn the respect of my peers. For example, I noticed among many daughters of African Muslim immigrants that when they would wear the hijab, as they grew into teenagers they would slowly show more of their hair bit by bit. Some even completely took it off at school to fit in with Americans and experiment with what their Muslim identity and immigrant heritage meant to them as new Americans.
While the pressure to fit in has always been a part of new American culture for teens, Muslim immigrants faced extra pressure after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. My mother survived a civil war, but when she immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee, she had to face new discrimination about being Muslim, even though she did not share the ethnicity or values of the terrorists. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum notes that hate crimes against anyone perceived to be Muslim spiked in the years after the 9/11 attacks. Even now, in 2026, hate crime levels have still not returned to pre-9/11 levels (“Muslims in America…Part 2,” www.911memorial.org).
My mom’s experience of this day, and the way it isolated the Muslim and Somali communities from fitting in with mainstream U.S. culture, is worth quoting in full.
“I remember the week when it happened, and the months following it. I think the big shock was not only the thousands of people that lost their lives and people that suffered the injuries but that it was us to be blamed for. I remember thinking, wait, surely, they don’t think that all Muslims had something to do with this, all we want is just peace. It gave me a lot of PTSDS. What topped it was this wasn’t even my country where I was born and raised. I only immigrated here not too long ago. It was awful. When the hate grew louder and stronger we didn’t even dare to leave the house for any reason and when we had to, I had to take my hijab off so I wouldn’t look like a Muslim. I felt sick to my stomach and till this day I regretted what I did but I did what I had to do to keep my family alive. We luckily had a neighbor who wasn’t Muslim and was willing to get anything we need. To this very day she will always have a special place in my heart and may her soul rest at ease. (Sharif 2026).”
My mother’s experience was like so many Muslims’ experience. Even to this day, I, my mom and many others from the younger generations have experienced anti-Muslim hate due to simply looking and speaking a certain way. I understand why this pressure to not be Muslim and not wear a hijab may have caused many Muslim girls to not claim something they were born with in their own blood, just to fit into society.
When teenagers go through the combined struggles of adolescents and immigrants, how does it affect their mental health overall? A study conducted by April K. Wilhelm wanted to measure the mental health in Somali youth in the United States. First, among U.S. adolescents in general, “depression affects an estimated one in eleven adolescents and young adults in the United States” (Wilhelm 531). This is higher among Somali refugees, but the numbers are not accurate because “the utilization of mainstream mental health services among Somali youth remains low” (Wilhelm 533). This is because the culture of community that I wrote about earlier – of helping a Somali neighbor in need and taking care of each other in the immigrant community – can have a dark side.
While Somali immigrants are very good about reaching out to neighbors who need help, the dark side of this is that mental health resources are discouraged (Wilhelm 533). After all, why would someone need a “Western” doctor when the community is supposed to take care of everyone? Wilhelm agrees, showing that Somali immigrants may “attribute mental illness symptoms to moral shortcoming in the affected individual, and perceived emotional expressions to be a sign of weakness” (Wilhelm 533). Again, why would someone be depressed when they already survived a war? This is the thinking within the Somali community. I can say as a daughter of Somali immigrants, mental health isn’t talked about much and is very much shut down and seen as a “weakness.” This has led to carrying additional trauma.
President Barack Obama once said in a State of the Union address, “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger – we were strangers once, too.” I believe that sums up pretty well. After all, just because one person from one race, religion, or ethnicity did something bad, doesn’t mean that the rest of the same category is all bad too. If we keep reducing people to one-word stereotypes, it will affect everyone – the older and younger generation, especially adolescents of multicultural backgrounds – and that will cause even more hate crimes and discrimination. Ultimately, immigrants or not, today’s teenagers will be the next generation of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and so much more. Let’s give them the best chance at success, and remember that “we were strangers once, too.”
WORKS CITED
“9/11 Museum “Muslims in America After 9/11, Part II.” National September 11 Memorial & Museum, www.911memorial.org/learn/students-and-teachers/lesson-plans/muslims-america-after-911-part-ii. Accessed 19 Mar. 2026.
Bigelow, Martha. “Somali Adolescents’ Negotiation of Religious and Racial Bias In and Out of School.” Theory Into Practice, vol. 47, no. 1, 2008, pp. 27–34.
Ellis, B. Heidi, et al. “Discrimination and Mental Health Among Somali Immigrants in North America.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 100, no. 9, 2010, pp. 1617–1623.
“Identity: More than our labels.” YouTube. Uploaded by Fuller Youth Institute, 2023. Accessed February 20, 2026.
Magan, Ifrah Mahamud and Deborah K. Padgett. “‘Home Is Where Your Root Is:’ Place Making, Belonging, and Community Building among Somalis in Chicago.” Social Work Journal, Vol. 66, No.2. April 2021, pp. 101-110.
Obama, Barack. “Address to the Nation.” November 20, 2014.
Sharif, Fawzia. Personal interview. March 6, 2026.
Wilhelm, April K., et al. “Mental Health in Somali Youth in the United States: The Role of Protective Factors in Preventing Depressive Symptoms, Suicidality, and Self-Injury.” Ethnicity & Health, vol. 26, no. 4, 2021, pp. 530–553.
Support the New Americans magazine to continue to serve our community with precise news that affect the new American, immigrant and refugee community. https://paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8LHFS78NRNJJY&source=url
