exodus

When We Keep Lowering the Bar: Why “White People Get Food Stamps Too” Is Not the Flex People Think It Is

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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.

When Freedom Feels Hard: Why Comfort Can Be a Cage 

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Freedom vs. Comfort 

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