There is something missing from many academic institutions that claim to center women: a meaningful engagement with the intersection of gender and race. In many classrooms, students still encounter psychology as if its foundations were culturally neutral. Yet many of those foundations were built without considering the lived realities of Black people.
Women’s colleges often position themselves as spaces for empowerment and critical inquiry. That mission requires going beyond the limits of traditional Western frameworks. This requires intentional efforts to equip students and emerging scholars with a broader range of ontologies, epistemologies, and cultural frameworks that challenge historically patriarchal and Eurocentric control over knowledge production.
Incorporating courses in Black psychology is one powerful way to fulfill that responsibility. By integrating these perspectives into the curriculum, women’s colleges can more fully live up to their mission, which is cultivating scholars who are not only intellectually rigorous but also culturally aware and socially responsive.
Understanding Black Psychology
Most college psychology classes only cover a Western or Eurocentric framework of psychology, which is often defined as “the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.” However, looking at the work of major scholars and theories of Black psychology, we know that psychology has deep African origins dating back to Ancient Kmt (Ancient Egypt) that focuses on the concept of the Sahku (translating to the illumination “soul” or “spirit”), which then makes the African origins of psychology rooted in the definition “the study of the illumination of the soul or spirit.” Teaching Black psychology at a college allows for an intergenerational cultural transmission of ancient knowledge about the mind, body, and soul to be transmitted to the next generation of healers, thinkers, and activists. This is a re-orientation to the ancient, the cultural, and emotionally stratified and significant markers of the lived human experience.
Teaching Black psychology at a college allows for an intergenerational cultural transmission of ancient knowledge about the mind, body, and soul to be transmitted to the next generation of healers, thinkers, and activists.
Further, Black psychology is the scientific study of how people of African descent know and experience the world. Western psychology could not and does not accurately assess and or understand the experiences of Black people. Thus, frameworks needed to be developed to counter racist or Eurocentric models for understanding the mind of Black people. Black psychology is rooted in cultural and spiritual rituals of Black people and emphasizes community and interdependence rather than the individual.
Why This Matters at a Women’s College
Black psychology is essential for women to study because it challenges the assumption that mainstream psychology speaks for everyone. The field was historically built around White male norms and Black psychology exposes how much that framework leaves out, especially when it comes to culture, spirituality, and collective healing. It calls for a reexamination of who defines “healthy” and whose experiences are excluded from that definition. For Black women, it gives recognition to experiences that psychology often gets wrong or overlooks completely. For all women, it helps explain how race, gender, and power affect not just who struggles, but who actually gets support.
Learning about Black psychology allows students to examine questions by speaking directly to Black psychologists, such as:
- What made/inspired you to become a psychologist?
- Have you felt included in past studies and teachings of psychology?
- Is there a specific branch of psychology that most sparks your interest?
- How would you describe any set-backs in the field you have encountered?
- Has there been any racial discrimination?
- Are there times when your research seems to not be quite right?
- Is there an aspect of psychology that is specific to Black culture (lived experiences)?
- Are there topics within your field that don’t relate/include Black people?
Here, we note that psychology is not only learned from the textbook and lecture slides, but from a person with Black lived experiences in the field of psychology.
The benefits of learning psychology from a Black psychologist are limitless. The topics that are studied and discussed can start off as more or less the same, the same old lectures about Freud, what CBT is, and the difference between career choices as a psychologist versus a psychiatrist. However, with every topic discussed, there can be a deeper look into cultural applications. Discussions of African-based teachings that are grounded in community can be compared and contrasted to the standard teachings of the theories proposed to the psychology community as a whole.
A Call for Intentional Learning
Ultimately, incorporating Black psychology into women’s college curricula is not simply about adding another elective course. It is about expanding the intellectual foundations of the discipline itself. When Black perspectives on the mind are included, psychology becomes more accurate, more humane, and more reflective of a fuller range of human experiences.
