When crabs are in a bucket, why do they continue to pull each other down?
Crab bucket syndrome is often used to describe social situations where one person is trying to better himself and others in the community attempt to pull them back down. Case in point, as a crab tries to release himself from the bucket, the other crabs look as though they are trying to pull the crab back into the bucket; so it seems.
Booker T Washington in one of his lectures fittingly described the black race by stating, “We are like crabs in a basket, that none would allow the other to climb over, but on any such attempt, all would combine to pull back into the barrel the one crab that would make the effort to climb out.” (160-170)
Some crabs are aquatic by nature therefore when they are placed in a bucket to be consumed it is natural instinct for them to try to escape anyway possible. The same thing has been said of black people, “if you place them into a bucket, they will eventually pull each other back in, so no one can escape.” Eventually they will consume or destroy each other.
If you remove something from its natural habitat. It has to transform itself. Just like taking a man from Africa from his native surrounding and placing him onto a ship, with 400 others suffering with him from inhumane conditions. What will he do? By trying to escape the bucket he fights his own kind, strictly to stay alive or maybe the others already know his fate. Perhaps they are trying to either, pull him back or maybe they are trying to help him understand his fate for trying. Since people of African descent first arrived in America, we have had to contend not only with white oppression but also with our own willingness to undermine each other.
When crabs are in a lidless bucket, it is quite fascinating to understand what happens when there’s only one in there, compared to multiple crabs. When