Scrabble Musings 3-12-09

How do I avoid becoming one of those crabs in a barrel while dealing with the same crabs?

Within the African American community, the whole "crabs in a barrel" mentality has sparked debate after debate about how we treat, support, encourage, and drag down each other within our society. This argument is probably one of the oldest and unsolved arguments that African Americans have had over the years. Hell, it even made its way into the campaign and election of President Obama.

"Crabs in a barrel" basically means that others are constantly climbing over and pulling others down once they have reached the top of the barrel to escape whatever obstacle was holding them down: poverty, education, race, sex, religion, etc. Within the African American community, we see that happen more often than not in all aspects of life; but the one that has been most dear to me and most prevalent to me has been the aspect of education.

I was a teacher in inner city public and choice schools for almost four years and have dealt with those crabs on many occasions. Many times those crabs were pulling the students down more often than other teachers (but they were still doing a very good job with yanking down teachers with their claws). In several of the schools I taught at, I saw things that I thought only existed on television or urban myths. Teachers in choice schools with minimum educations (high school diplomas), teachers that couldn't read some of the text in the children's books, running out of food in the lunch rooms and making the students miss class until they went out and bought hours old chicken for them to eat, and thirty year old textbooks (imagine trying to teach U.S. government from a textbook that listed the current president as Jimmy Carter).

The co-worker that I spoke about in my "Tolerant" article was one of the "teachers" at a choice school I taught at almost three years ago. Before we got into the whole nappy hair debate, she had asked me about a portfolio I had put together for the teachers to assist them with African and African American history. She said that she needed it because she and a friend of hers (the former assistant principal of the same school) were going to open up a choice school of their own.

I am torn about even giving her the portfolio because they were a part of the crab barrel that helped pull these kids down, especially the assistant principal. Their school was one that had less than adequate meals for the students (e.g. - the meals weren't nutritionally balanced based on the school system's standards) and encouraged the replacement of teachers with bachelor's degrees (math) and years of experience (accounting) in their content with high school graduates that had some reading issues. Condoning this type of behavior by people who are supposed to be providing and giving the best to their students makes me want to not give them the information because I feel as if they won't use it to help the students, but I do believe that they rather use it to only help themselves.

But, I don't want to be one of those barrel crabs and deny them the help that they need (especially if they are really intent on opening the school). The information that I give them would be extremely helpful to their process because it contains worksheets, lesson plans, outside material, and games that I created for the school based on the knowledge that I have in the subject (I hold a bachelor's degree in Africology with a focus on Culture and Society). I know that if I don't give them the information that they would not know where and how to acquire the two months worth of material I put together and I would be just as much as a barrel crab to the children as they were (are).

I'll be fighting with this dilemma for a while, trying to get as much information from her about their plans for the school and what they will be doing differently based on their experience from the last disaster we were involved in. Hopefully, they will allow the students a way out of the barrel so that they won't become crabs themselves.