The Tribune

By IVOINE INGRAHAM

IN the Bahamas, we have talked for generations about what we call the “black crab syndrome.” Everybody knows what the expression means. One person begins climbing out of the barrel and, instead of the others helping that person over the top, somebody reaches up and pulls him back down.

It’s our way of describing envy, resentment, and the strange tendency to become uncomfortable when somebody from among us decides that ordinary is no longer good enough.

For years, I treated the crab story mainly as a metaphor. Then a friend showed me something I have never forgotten.

He placed white crabs in a pen and left them there. When we returned some time later, nearly all had escaped. Only three remained. As we watched, the remaining crabs seemed to work together in a way that helped them climb toward freedom.

Then he tried it with a pen of black crabs.

When we returned, they were still there. Many had damaged or lost legs. Not one had escaped.

Now, one backyard observation is not a scientific experiment, and I would not pretend that it establishes some biological law about different species of crabs. But what I witnessed gave extraordinary force to a metaphor Bahamians have been using for years.

Because sometimes, if we are willing to admit it, we behave as though it’s more important to keep everybody in the pen than to see somebody escape it.

And that is our real problem.

Black crab syndrome is not about the colour of anybody’s skin. It’s not some biological defect in black people. It’s a mindset, a learned culture of pulling down rather than lifting, resenting rather than celebrating, ridiculing rather than encouraging, and demanding explanations from people who decide they want something different.

We see it in some families. We see it in some neighbourhoods. We see it among friends.

Someone decides to change his life, and instead of hearing, “Man, I'm proud of you,” he hears: “You think you're better than us now?”

Someone moves into a better neighbourhood. “You forget where you come from.”

Someone starts dressing differently, speaking differently, travelling, saving money or mixing in different circles. “You get rich and switch.”

Someone stops spending every weekend drinking and partying because he is trying to build a business. “He feels he is better than everybody.”

Someone decides he does not want his children growing up around the same dysfunction he experienced. Suddenly, leaving is treated like betrayal.

Why?

Some Bahamian neighbourhoods have generations of the same families living under substantially the same conditions. There is nothing dishonourable about remaining in the community where you were raised. There is pride in roots, family, history, and belonging.

But there is a difference between remembering your roots and refusing to grow new branches.

Sometimes we romanticise stagnation.

We tell people that leaving means forgetting where they came from. We tell successful people they must constantly prove their loyalty by giving something back. And sometimes “giving back” really means giving to people who made no comparable sacrifice to change their own circumstances.

Helping people is admirable. Feeling entitled to the fruits of somebody else’s discipline is something entirely different.

Think about the young Bahamian who spends years studying while everybody else is partying. He sacrifices. He gets qualified. He gets a good job. He saves. He buys a house.

Then the accusations begin. “You changed.”

Of course he changed. Wasn’t that the point? What sense does it make to demand progress and then ridicule people when progress changes them?

Sometimes you are supposed to change.

If you grew up around violence, change.

If nobody in your family saves money, change.

If your friends ridicule education, change.

If everybody around you spends everything they earn trying to impress everybody else, change.

If your neighbourhood has accepted garbage, abandoned cars, broken fences, and deteriorating homes as normal, change.

You don’t owe anybody an apology for improving yourself. And perhaps this is where the black crab syndrome hurts us most: we have confused loyalty with sameness.

Real loyalty should not require failure. If I love my brother and I see him climbing, why would I pull his leg? Push him.

If he gets over the wall first, he can reach back for me. That’s how communities advance. Imagine if we applied that thinking to our neighbourhoods.

We complain constantly about dirty surroundings. But government cannot possibly be responsible for every bottle somebody throws out a car window, every bag of household garbage dumped in a vacant lot, every old appliance abandoned on the roadside, or every yard allowed to become a dumping ground.

What would happen if 10 households on one street decided, Enough!?

This Saturday, everybody comes outside. One neighbour has a truck. Somebody has a wheelbarrow. Somebody brings garbage bags. Somebody cuts the bush. Somebody moves the old debris. Somebody checks on the elderly resident who cannot clean her own yard.

Nobody waits for a politician. You live there; your conscience should prick you to have some pride. The politician didn’t make the dirt.

Nobody asks which party you support. Nobody cares who gets the credit. Clean the street. Then maintain it. Keep it clean every day. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.

Imagine another street doing the same thing next week. Then another. Street by street, block by block, community by community, we could transform the appearance of entire neighbourhoods.

And appearance matters.

When you wake up every morning surrounded by garbage, overgrown lots, rusting vehicles, broken fences, and houses that haven't seen paint in decades, deterioration eventually feels normal. Our surroundings speak to us.

So instead of buying another outfit we don't need, to impress people who probably aren't thinking about us anyway, maybe buy some paint. Paint the house. Fix the gate. Cut the yard. Plant something. Pressure-wash the wall. Clean the road in front of your property. Then help your neighbour do his.

Another kind of black crab behaviour we need to confront is purposeless competition. Some of us will go into debt to appear successful rather than make sacrifices to become successful. A neighbour buys a new car, so somebody else needs a newer one. A friend travels, so we need a trip. Somebody wears a certain brand, so we need the brand.

Meanwhile, savings are non-existent, the house needs repairs, and one emergency could wipe out the household. That’s not progress. We’re performing prosperity instead of building it. And the performance becomes another pen.

Everybody is watching everybody else. Everybody is comparing. Everybody is trying to prove something. Nobody wants the neighbour to appear too far ahead. What if we competed differently?

You started saving? Show me how.

You bought a house? Tell me what you did.

Your child earned a scholarship? Let’s celebrate that child.

You opened a business? I’ll support it if you provide good service.

You stopped drinking? I won’t tease you.

You went back to school at 40? I respect you.

You cleaned up your property? I should clean mine.

That is how we raise the game. The answer to black crab syndrome is not individualism. It’s not to escape and say, “To hell with everybody behind me.”

The answer is cooperation without entitlement. Help people climb, but expect them to climb. Open doors, but expect people to walk through them.

Teach what you know, but expect people to do something with the knowledge.

Celebrate success without demanding ownership.

And when somebody makes it, don’t immediately ask, “What he do for the community?”

First ask what we can learn from what he did for himself. Then ask whether he can help somebody else find the road.

Bahamian communities have enormous talent. Hard-working mothers, gifted young people, tradespeople, entrepreneurs, teachers, nurses, police officers, artists, athletes, and ordinary citizens want something better. They’re not all trying to leave everybody behind.

Many want to move forward. Let them. Better yet, move with them.

This is why I keep thinking about those crabs. Not because I believe human beings are crabs, and certainly not because I believe the behaviour of any crab species determines the behaviour of a race of people. It does not.

I think about them because the image forces us to ask an uncomfortable question: When somebody beside me begins climbing, what do I do? Do I grab his leg? Or do I push?

That question belongs in our homes, workplaces, schools, churches, neighbourhood associations, and friendship circles.

Perhaps we need to “mix the crabs”—figuratively speaking. Expose ourselves to people and communities where cooperation works. Learn from Bahamians who pool resources, mentor younger people, maintain their surroundings, invest rather than merely consume, celebrate achievement and understand that somebody else’s success does not diminish their own.

We don’t have to defend destructive habits simply because they’re familiar. Culture isn’t only what we inherit. Culture is also what we choose to cowwntinue. And what we choose to stop.

So let’s stop glorifying stagnation as loyalty. Stop making people feel guilty for wanting better. Stop laughing at ambition. Stop treating education as showing off. Stop calling discipline “acting funny.” Stop confusing spending with success. Stop waiting for government to clean what we ourselves dirty.

Stop asking the person climbing out of the pen to explain why he wants to leave it. And, above all, stop pulling. Push.

Push your children higher than you went.

Push your neighbour when he starts a business.

Push your friend when she goes back to school.

Push the young man who decides there must be more to life than the street corner.

Push the family trying to buy its first home.

Push the neighbour cleaning his property.

Push one another until climbing becomes as contagious as pulling down once was.

Black crab syndrome may be real as a social mindset, but it doesn’t have to define us. It’s not our destiny. We could do better.

We could raise the game. We could clean our surroundings. We could respect ourselves and one another more. We could build neighbourhoods where success is celebrated instead of interrogated, where improvement inspires imitation instead of resentment, and where getting ahead does not require apologising for leaving old habits behind.

The pen isn’t locked. The walls are not impossible to climb. And there’s enough room outside for all of us.

The question is whether, when one of us starts climbing, the rest of us will finally stop pulling at his legs—and start pushing him over the top.