Phia Salter: How Culture and Systems Shape Racial Experiences

 “Culture and systems shape all of our psychological experiences, including those experiences pertaining to race,” said Phia Salter, a newly named 2025 Bass Chair. “I’m interested in how we identify. What it means to be Black and how we talk about what it means to be Black.” 

The Fred W. Shaffer Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience identifies as a critical race psychologist, a blend of her training in social and cultural psychology and Africana Studies. Salter is interested in the ways that culture, systems and racial experiences inform collective memory, and how those elements of memory impact social identity and systemic racism.

She provides the example of the identifying labels Black versus African American, and how those choices people make about their social identity are reflective of many systems at play. 

“It's not just ‘natural’ to identify as one or the other,” Salter explained. “A lot of history and psychology, both collective and individual, goes into the labels that we choose and how we identify — and how others see us.” 

Her research on collective memory focuses on how people tell stories about the past. Which stories are told, which stories are left out, and what are the consequences of that to racism, identity and interactions between different groups?

This work extends to how collective memory is represented in the world, and one dimension of Salter’s research explores Black History Month displays in schools. Her findings suggest that sanitized displays — a sort of colorblind approach absent of content related to the civil rights movement and slavery — can perpetuate racism, because they prioritize the comfort of non-Black people, while more nuanced displays that include critical history foster anti-racism conversations. Salter’s work also delves into the area of voter suppression, and how historical knowledge predicts recognition of modern racist policies. 

Whether in her newly formed lab, SPARCL (Social Psychology, Anti-Racism, and Culture Lab), or teaching at the front of the classroom, Salter facilitates dialogue and critical thinking that encourages questioning and dismantles oppression and injustice. 

This fall, she is teaching the course Black Psychology, addressing racial inequalities and stereotypes, and fostering deep reflection and empathy among students. The field of Black psychology emerged in the late 1960’s to counter the Eurocentric models of mainstream psychology, which approached Black communities with a deficit model, where Black people are compared to white people, and white people are the standard. 

“Black psychology intervenes and interrogates that model, asking: Who gets to be the standard and why?,” Salter said. 

“I love creating a space of belonging and affirmation. Everyone has something to contribute and should feel comfortable being able to do so. I really want students to lead with tools that allow them to be critical of common knowledge and stereotypes and myths.”