Young adults may be particularly vulnerable to challenges to self-esteem during the period of emerging adulthood due to increased instability, self-focus, and identity exploration. Although Black adolescents and young adults have higher self-esteem on average than their White counterparts, they also experience more stressors, including frequent experiences of racial discrimination, that may negatively impact self-esteem. Racial discrimination is theorized to diminish self-esteem through internalization of negative messages about one’s race, and cross-sectional research has generally found a negative relation between experiences of racial discrimination and self-esteem in Black Americans. Longitudinal research is needed, however, to clarify whether racial discrimination leads to lower self-esteem or whether higher self-esteem may lead young adults to choose environments in which they experience less racial discrimination. In addition, strengths common in Black communities, such as a strong positive ethnic-racial identity, may play an important role in explaining the apparent contradiction between findings of overall high self-esteem and high levels of discrimination in Black young adults. This study will therefore examine whether perceived racial discrimination (PRD) interferes with the development of self-esteem over the transition to adulthood, and whether a race-specific protective factor – positive ethnic-racial identity – buffers effects in a sample of Black Americans from rural Georgia and Iowa.