First things first. I am not a Super Bowl watcher. Never claimed to be. I am a fair weather fan. If the Chicago Bears were playing, I might tune in, check the score, grab a snack, and pretend I understand what just happened on third down. Otherwise? I can count on one hand how many full games I’ve watched in my lifetime, and I’d still have fingers left to hold my drink.
Now let’s get into the real conversation. Football has grown into one of the biggest cultural symbols of America. People love to jump in with historical technicalities about where this or that originated. That’s fine. Y’all enjoy that research project. My point is about what football represents right now. Today. On the global stage.
Millions of people across the world watch the Super Bowl. That platform isn’t just about touchdowns and nachos. It’s messaging. It’s branding. It’s cultural representation whether we like it or not. That halftime stage becomes a snapshot of what America chooses to present about itself.
And just to be crystal clear before someone twists themselves into a knot, my issue is not with ethnicity. Not now. Not ever. That’s not my lane.
My question is about vision.
If we are showcasing America, why are we not showcasing all of America? Why are we still operating in genre silos like it’s a middle school cafeteria? One table over here. One table over there. Nobody mixing. Nobody collaborating. Meanwhile the rest of the world is watching and we’re acting like we forgot we have a whole cultural buffet available.
Imagine something bigger.
Country sharing the stage with R&B. Rock blending with Latin. Gospel bringing soul into the room. Pop tying it together. Artists having their individual spotlight, then coming together for something unified that reflects the full spectrum of this country’s sound and identity.
That’s inclusivity. Not slogans. Not hashtags. Not panel discussions. A real visual, audible collaboration on the largest stage available. Because if we’re going to talk about America representing unity in diversity, the Super Bowl is the place to demonstrate it. Not in theory. In practice.
That’s the America I believe in. Bold. Creative. Collaborative.
Confident enough to stand together instead of separated into neat little boxes.
Y’all aren’t ready for that discussion!
Anyway… y’all carry on. I’ve got snacks, peace, and zero halftime regret.
Let me start with something we forget far too easily.
Just because somebody in authority sets the bar low and their own fear keeps them from raising it does not mean we have to stay chained to their limit. Their ceiling is not your ceiling. Their fear is not your boundary.
We have to stop waiting for people with small vision to define how high we are allowed to climb. If they set the bar low that is their business. Raise yours. And then jump over it.
While I was thinking about that I stumbled across the story of Stephen Bishop. A man I never learned about in school. His story hit me like truth wrapped in fire. Because what he did is the exact picture of what it looks like to refuse someone else’s ceiling.
The Boy The World Tried To Limit
Stephen Bishop was seventeen. Enslaved. Assigned forced labor inside Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave. His life was not built on opportunity. It was built on commands.
Lead the tourists. Stay on the familiar paths. Do not explore. Do not ask questions. Do not dream. Do not become anything more than the box you were placed in.
That was the limit placed on him.
But Stephen Bishop was not built for limits. He was not built for repetition. He was not built for the tiny world he was forced into.
Something in him felt pulled to the darkness of that cave. To the mystery. To the places no one dared to go. And not because it was a job. But because something inside him refused to settle for the boundaries someone else drew around him.
The Part That Shook Me
Stephen did not explore during the day with permission. He explored on his own time. What little time an enslaved teenager even had.
After a full day of labor. After walking tourists through the parts they considered safe. After the master went to sleep.
While everyone else rested, Stephen walked into a pitch black cave at night carrying only an oil lamp and a courage the world still talks about.
Then he reached what everyone else feared. The Bottomless Pit. The end of all known maps. The line where grown men turned back.
But Stephen did not turn back.
He stripped a cedar sapling. Laid it across the chasm. And crossed it.
A teenager balancing above a drop that could have taken his life instantly. And because he crossed it he discovered an entire world scientists did not even know existed.
He doubled the known size of Mammoth Cave. He named chambers after literature he taught himself to read. He mapped the system from memory. Maps that modern explorers still rely on.
He was legally property. But spiritually. Mentally. Intellectually. Uncontainable.
Would A Stephen Bishop Today Stop At The Line
And it made me ask myself.
If a person with a Stephen Bishop spirit lived today and someone tried to limit them or draw lines around them or hand them ceilings…
Would they stop?
Or would they walk past it the same way he crossed that cedar pole in 1838. With purpose. With boldness. With a quiet “watch me” in their spirit.
Because that kind of spirit does not disappear. It shows up in every generation. And it never bows to fear.
Be The Bar Raiser
Stephen Bishop did not wait for permission. He did not bow to ceilings. He did not follow limits set by people who feared what he might discover.
He stepped into darkness and came back carrying light.
So yes. Honor Stephen Bishop. Say his name. Tell his story. But also take the message with you.
You are not required to live under anyone else’s bar. Raise your own. Jump it. Set the standard for yourself.
Be the bar raiser. Be the one who refuses to shrink. Be the one who crosses boundaries fear tried to draw. Be the one who discovers what others never dared to see.
Because God puts a Stephen Bishop spirit in people He calls to do more.
And maybe today that someone is you.
The Biblical Connection
Stephen Bishop’s courage is the same spirit I see in Scripture.
Western Bible: Joshua chapters fourteen and fifteen. Caleb did not stop when fear spoke. He asked for the mountain everyone else avoided. He did not bow to small thinking. He raised the bar.
Ethiopian Canon: The Book of Jubilees. Chapters ten through fifteen. God calls His people higher. He reminds them of who they are. He pushes them beyond fear and into destiny.
God did not create you for small living. He did not design you for ceilings placed by someone else. He calls you higher. He calls you forward. He calls you to territory that fear tries to block.
Stephen Bishop crossed a line that everyone else refused to cross. Caleb climbed a mountain everyone else feared. Jubilees reminds us that God keeps calling His people into more.
Their limits are not your truth. Their fear is not your future. Their ceiling is not your story.
Why I Will Not Shrink for White Liberals or Black Liberals Who Want to Think for Me
Every time I open my mouth as a Black conservative woman, somebody thinks they need to correct me. And let me be clear about something from the jump. Nine times out of ten, the ones trying to “educate” me, shame me, or drag me back into the mental basement are White liberals and Black liberals who have bought into the same script written for them by the Democratic Party.
And here is what people do not want to talk about.
White liberals love to act like they are the referees of Black thought. They want to decide which Black voice is authentic and which one needs “saving.” They show up with their savior complex, convinced I need them to explain my experience to me. They think my beliefs, my convictions, and my political stance must have been handed to me by a White conservative puppet master. Meanwhile they are the ones being spoon fed by mainstream media, hollywierd, the education system, and the politicians on the left telling them what to think about Black people every single day.
And yes, I have had Black liberals come at me too. But overwhelmingly, the racism I have personally experienced throughout my life came from White liberals. In boardrooms. In leadership roles. In committee meetings. In classrooms. The ones who smiled while saying, “You’re one of the good ones.” The ones who told me, “You are not like the others.” The ones who said, “We do not expect people like you to be able to do that.” The ones who insisted that getting an ID or a driver’s license is too hard for Black people, but not for them or their children.
That is racism. Do not sugarcoat it. Do not spiritualize it. Do not dress it up in “progressive language.” It is the same mindset from the plantation, wrapped in a softer tone and marketed as compassion.
Today they are not whipping our backs. They are whipping our minds.
And here is where I need you to think.
During slavery, White liberals controlled Black people through physical force. Today the Democratic Party tries to control us through dependency. They are not selling our children to different plantations anymore, but they are still destroying our families by encouraging a lifestyle that weakens our structure from the inside out. Many having a bunch of babies by many different men. This destroys the Black family structure. They are still lowering the bar, still pushing a curriculum in predominantly Black communities that keeps our children academically behind. They are still normalizing behavior they would never tolerate in their own neighborhoods or from their own children.
They keep pushing this lie that all Black women should care about is being sexy. They act like spirituality is outdated, that being the woman of the house is old fashioned, that marriage is oppression, and motherhood is settling. They want Black women loud, exposed, sexualized, and disconnected from everything that once made us powerful. Because a grounded Black woman is harder to control than a distracted one. A spiritually anchored Black woman will not bow to anyone’s narrative. A Black woman who knows her worth in God cannot be manipulated. They do not want that. They want the version of us they can manage. But a woman who honors her home, her purpose, and her God is unstoppable.
There is no difference in the mindset. Only the method.
So, ask yourself why they work so hard to keep the bar low for us. Why do they celebrate struggle for us but excellence for themselves. Why do they fight so aggressively to maintain the idea that we are incapable unless they step in.
And while we are asking the hard questions, let us ask this one too.
Why were we the only enslaved people in world history who were forbidden to keep our original culture?
Every other enslaved group throughout history kept their identity. Their language. Their names. Their customs. Their spiritual heritage. Their food. Their family lineage.
We are the only people whose culture was systematically erased. That should tell you something. That should make a light come on in your spirit.
Why was it so important to stop us from knowing who we were before slavery?
What were they afraid of?
Because here is the truth that the Democratic Party does not want you to uncover.
We were powerful before the ships. We were brilliant before the chains. We were builders, thinkers, warriors, inventors, scholars, farmers, navigators, mathematicians, spiritual leaders, and architects before anyone ever laid eyes on us. That was who we were in Alkebulan, the original name for the land today called Africa, the cradle of civilization.
And that greatness was not only across the ocean. Many of our ancestors were already here, long before colonization and long before slavery began. That is part of the truth they do not want you to find. Because once you know that not all Black Americans came here chained in the bottom of ships, and that some were already on this land with skills, culture, and civilization, the whole story changes, and you start to wonder, what else did they lie about.
The Democratic Party cannot survive if Black people wake up to who we really are. They need the victim narrative. They need the dependency. They need the power. They need the bar low, so we never look up. They need us stuck on the hamster wheel they built. Because if we ever rise to our original identity, we would leave their plantation of thought overnight, and slavery would truly be over.
And here is what Black people MUST take accountability for.
We got comfortable. We accepted the handouts. We accepted the lowered expectations. We accepted their version of who we are. We let them dictate our worth, our struggle, our future, and our place in this country.
And we forgot that our greatness existed before slavery, before politics, before the Democratic Party existed, before America even became a nation.
So let me say this clearly.
Stop letting people who do not know your history tell you how to think. Stop letting the same people who rewrote your history tell you how to think. Stop letting people who do not want the truth dictate what truth is. Stop letting people who fear your awakening convince you to avoid researching the real history.
Because once you see the truth, you cannot unsee it. Once you know the fullness of our history, you cannot stay in the box they built for you. Once you understand the power in your lineage, you cannot remain dependent on people who benefit from your dependency.
Once you know your true identity, you stop shrinking to fit the expectations of people who do not even know their own identity. You stop letting politics define your worth. You stop lowering yourself to meet the limits someone else placed on you. You stop apologizing for thinking freely. You stop bowing to narratives built to keep you dependent. You stop being afraid of rejection from people who were never rooting for you anyway.
And let me make this clear for everyone reading.
For ALL my brothers and sisters out there regardless of race, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Native, and everyone in between. You are not who the Democratic Party says you are. You are not the stereotype they push. You are not the limitations they place on you. You are not the narrative they need you to play out so they can continue to feel superior, powerful, and morally elevated at your expense.
You have a God given identity. You have a God given mind. You have a God given purpose.
And if you do not take the time to research your true history, someone else will hand you a counterfeit version and expect you to live by it.
I am a Christian Black Conservative woman and I am unbothered. Not because everybody agrees with me. Not because I expect them to. But because I refuse to be mentally enslaved by a party that needs me to stay dependent, resentful, uninformed, and small.
I said what I said. And I will keep saying it until we stop living under a story that was never ours to begin with.
Western Bible: King Josiah, 2 Kings Chapters 22 and 23 The people had forgotten who they were. They were living under a story that was not theirs anymore. Their identity had been rewritten. Their faith was mixed with lies. Their history had been hidden. Their truth was buried. Then Josiah found the Book of the Law and said, we will no longer live by someone else’s version of us. He tore down false altars. He restored truth. He restored identity. He restored the foundation that had been lost. He did not shrink back. He rose up.
Ethiopian Canon: Book of Jubilees, Chapters 10 through 15 God reminds the descendants of Abraham who they are, where they came from, and what covenant runs through their bloodline. God brings them back to their roots. He restores what was forgotten. He reclaims what they did not even realize had been lost. That message speaks today. God is calling us to rediscover the truth beneath the lies.
I refuse to be small. And I refuse to let anyone else shrink me. Not White liberals. Not Black liberals. Not anyone who thinks they get to think for me.
Let me tell you what set this whole thing off. I was scrolling through one of those so called Black Excellence or Black First pages I troll every now and then, and somebody tried to clap back at a post about food stamp statistics by saying something that made me stop mid scroll.
“Well more white people get food stamps than blacks.”
And the person said it like they just dropped a mic. Like that was the moment I was supposed to sit back and say, “You know what, you are right. Let me hush.”
No ma’am. No sir. That is not the victory some people think it is.
I do not know when surviving became something to defend. I do not know when being trapped in a cycle became something to brag about. I do not know when we started matching our struggle to someone else’s struggle so we do not have to face what is keeping us stuck.
I am not fighting for us to be equal at the bottom. I want us to rise from the bottom entirely.
Let us talk about the real numbers
Here are the current Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation numbers based on the latest reports:
• Around 35 to 37 percent of SNAP participants are white • Around 25 to 27 percent are Black • Around 15 to 16 percent are Hispanic • Around 3 to 4 percent are Asian • Around 1 to 2 percent are Native American • The remainder falls into the unreported or unknown category
Yes white people make up the largest group on food stamps. They should. They are the largest share of the population.
But here is the part people love skipping. Black households are nearly twice as likely to need assistance. That is not a bragging point. That is a warning sign.
It is like saying, “Well other folks are drowning too.” Okay. But why are we still in the water when we should be building boats.
What frustrates me is not the struggle. Everybody goes through struggle. What frustrates me is when we protect the struggle and defend the struggle and call it normal because we are used to it.
Some of us want to lower the bar so far that anything counts as winning. I want the bar raised so high we have to stretch to reach it.
And here is the truth. If you know deep down that something is not good for your community, the answer is not to justify it by pointing fingers at who else is suffering. The answer is to break the cycle. The answer is to climb.
Do not tell me “white people do it too.” That is not the point. It never was.
The deeper issue: Why do we defend the basement
What is happening is simple. When people are tired of fighting, they start settling. And when they start settling, they start defending what hurts them.
“White people are on it too” is not empowerment. It is a coping mechanism.
It is a way to avoid asking the hard question. Why have we accepted being under the bar for so long that we now measure progress by who else is struggling with us.
That is not liberation. That is bondage dressed up as equality.
Western Scripture: Hosea 4:6
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
You cannot heal what you refuse to see. You cannot rise from what you refuse to confront. You cannot break a cycle that you are busy defending.
Knowledge breaks chains. Truth breaks cycles. Accountability opens doors.
Ethiopian Scripture: Jubilees 1:25
“And I will send my angels before you, and they shall keep you in all my ways, and bring you into the land of truth and righteousness.”
Truth and righteousness. Not excuses. Not cycles. Not generational patterns we have decided to normalize.
God brings us into truth. The question is whether we will live in it or run from it.
A reflection for 2025
We are at a moment where some Black folks are choosing comfort over clarity. Memes over math. Feelings over facts.
I am not interested in defending the basement. I am interested in building the exit.
And I will keep saying it loud. Poverty is not our culture. Struggle is not our identity. Government dependency is not our destiny.
We are not meant to survive forever. We are meant to rise.
If you are tired of living under the bar, stop lowering it and start climbing over it.
I said what I said. And I will keep saying it until we stop normalizing what we are meant to overcome.
The Israelites were finally out of Egypt, free from Pharaoh’s system, but discomfort showed up, and suddenly freedom didn’t feel like freedom.
We don’t always talk about this part of the Exodus story. We celebrate the miracle of the Red Sea, the confrontation with Pharaoh, the plagues, all the dramatic parts. But we skip over the moment after freedom came, when the same people who prayed for deliverance started complaining about what freedom required.
“If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt. There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”(Exodus 16:3)
They were willing to trade freedom for comfort. They were willing to return to slavery because slavery was familiar. That is not just ancient history. That is a human tendency. Sometimes we choose bondage because bondage comes with certainty. It is predictable. It does not require growth or trust. It does not ask us to walk by faith.
Mental Chains Today
The Western Bible shows us the external rebellion. The Ethiopian Bible, one of the oldest surviving biblical records, shows us the same, but goes deeper. The focus is not just that Israel complained. It is that God was exposing that their minds were still enslaved, even though their bodies had been released. They did not just need a new location. They needed a new mindset. That is deliverance on a different level.
Some Black people in America today are doing the same thing. They march and protest and shout about freedom but still cling to the very political party that benefits from keeping Black people mentally enslaved. Some of us hold on to the Democratic Party the same way the Israelites held on to Egypt, even though the whole system feeds dependency instead of empowerment. Handouts instead of ownership. Narratives of victimhood instead of victory. Chains of the mind disguised as charity.
It is not a physical plantation now. It is a mental one.
The Digital Plantation
There are overseers today, but the whips look different.
The overseer with the whip now is the Democratic Party that demands loyalty in exchange for crumbs of progress.
The overseer with the whip now is the self-proclaimed Black leaders and influencers who are still mentally enslaved and try to drag the rest of us back onto the mental plantation when we start thinking for ourselves.
The overseer with the whip now is the mainstream media and social media that constantly tells us we are oppressed, powerless, and dependent on government systems to survive.
And let’s be real. Some of these “pro-Black” Facebook pages and TikTok accounts that stir up racial anger and political outrage are not even run by Black people. They are run by white liberals pretending to care, pumping out emotional bait to keep us angry and easy to manipulate. That is not empowerment; that is strategic slavery, updated for a digital world.
Until we see it for what it is, we will keep defending Egypt and calling it freedom. We will keep voting for chains and calling them rights. We will keep blaming God for deliverance that does not feel like comfort.
The Wilderness Choice
You can be free and still love the comfort of captivity. You can pray for breakthroughs and still beg to go back to the moment life requires responsibility. You can vote against your own liberation because you have been trained to believe you are powerless without permission.
But God is still saying the same thing He told Moses and Israel:
“You were not born to die in Egypt.”
So here is the real question:
Are you willing to leave the system that keeps you fed but not free?
Are you willing to walk into the wilderness even when you do not know every detail, but you trust God to lead?
Because freedom will always feel hard when you have been conditioned to love the cage.
Call to Action
Ask God to expose every place in your life where you have accepted the chains just because they look like comfort. Freedom does not come from a political party or a social system. Freedom starts in the mind and finishes in the spirit. When Freedom Feels Hard: Why Comfort Can Be a Cage
Pam's Pulse 