The Psychology of Black People: Why We Hate on Each Other

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article called “The Psychology of Women: Why They Hate on Each Other,” which talked about the various reasons women often snub their noses at other women who are doing better than them. 

One of my regular readers wrote me, and posed the following question:

“Why is this phenomena of ’senseless hating’ also somewhat present (across gender lines) in the black community?”

The answer to this question is actually quite easy: the reason black people often hate against other blacks who are more successful than they are is because of what I like to call the “Crabs In a Barrel” theory.

Those of you not familiar with the working of crabs may not be aware, but if you put a whole bunch of crabs inside a barrel, they all have one goal: to try to make it to the top of the barrel and escape!

Yet lo and behold, not a single one of them ever makes it out of the barrel. Why? Because as soon as one of them gets close to the top of the barrel, the other crabs pull it back down. This goes on for each crab that tries to escape its trapping: as soon as it gets close to achieving its goal, the other crabs below pull it back down.

Black people are often the same way. We currently make up 12% of the U.S. population, and are being overtaken in the “minority” sector by various other races. The job market is already a hard enough place for blacks to get hired in, let alone promoted.

What this means is, there is a perceived - re-read, “perceived” - limited amount of highly desired slots for black people in upper-to-middle class society, and the number black people fighting for those spots on a daily basis is quite high.

Unfortunately, the actual number of blacks who make it into that region are, percentage-wise, quite low. As a result, you have a larger number of blacks who look at the ones in the upper realms of class status, and are angry that another black person figured out how to get there when they couldn’t even get their foot in the door.

Thus: the hate and jealousy blacks have for each other.

My brother and I grew up in neighborhoods that were quite nice, yet for some reason our parents would always take us to Black churches that were in what would be considered the “hood” areas of town (i.e. Jackson-Ward - people in Richmond will know what I’m talking about!). As soon as we would try to make friends with the kids at these churches, they’d immediately “white”-list us (i.e. call us “white” for having proper grammer when we spoke) and make fun of us all the time.

Was this teasing warranted? Of course not! But you have to think about the fact that we were coming into church dressed in fairly nice suits, while some of these kids could barely get a T-shirt and shorts together for Sunday service. And both of our parents had successful jobs and/or life situations that allowed us to live well, whereas most of them lived in the worst part of the ‘hood.

Thus: the hate and jealousy blacks have for each other.

It sucks that we feel like we have to tear someone else down in order to “be on top.” 50 Cent became famous because he came out and dissed everyone else that was ahead of him in the rap game. Meanwhile, most rappers’ songs are about killing any other “brother” who tries to step to, or say they are better, than them. Black basketball players resort to fighting other teams physically if they accidentally knock them over during a game. The Supremes break up just because Diana Ross is getting a lil’ more spotlight than the other members.

The list of examples go on and on.

What’s interesting to note is, if the crabs in the barrel were to work together to knock the barrel over, they’d ALL be able to get set free. Yet, because each crab selfishly wants to help only themselves, they’d rather pull another crab down instead of lifting it up to get out the barrel.

And the same is true of African-Americans. Until we can stop hating on each other and help each other be successful, the majority of us are going to forever be stuck in a symbolic barrel, always hating the person above us and focusing so much energy on pulling them back down that we never end up bettering our community’s situation as a whole.

-A.P.T.