unPHILtered: The Way I See It

by Phil Robertson

  Some of us need to get off the color code in America and take to heart, once and for all: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). We need to understand that we’re all humans and Americans, regardless of how we might look.

  During the interview with the GQ reporter, I told him that I believed our country’s founding fathers were Bible-loving and godly men. He reminded me that many of the founding fathers approved of slavery.

  “Do you believe in slavery?” he asked me.

  I told him I absolutely did not.

  Then the reporter asked me if I ever witnessed an African American being mistreated by a white person while growing up in the South. Now, you have to remember that I spent much of my youth in Dixie, Louisiana, during the civil rights struggle. I told the reporter that I’d never personally witnessed an African American being mistreated by a white person or a white person being mistreated by an African American for that matter. I never saw it happen. I grew up in a very small farming community in Caddo Parish, which is in the northwest corner of Louisiana, near the Arkansas border. I never witnessed any friction between races, and I grew up with whites and blacks. That was my personal experience at that time in my life.

  But that doesn’t mean I’m naïve enough to think that African Americans weren’t badly mistreated for more than a century—even after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States in 1865. The days of slavery and then Jim Crow laws in the South were the darkest days in our country’s history. Where I grew up, segregation laws were in place, and whites and blacks attended separate schools and used separate restrooms. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a “colored” restroom. I looked at it and thought to myself, Separate bathrooms? What kind of idiot came up with that? I know African Americans were badly mistreated in the South, including in Louisiana. Historians have documented thousands of cases of horrific lynchings, beatings, and murders in the South during the twentieth century, but I never saw an incident with my own eyes, which is what I told the GQ reporter. If it ever happened in my neck of the woods, it didn’t occur in the open because I never saw it or heard about it. At the time, I didn’t know what Jim Crow laws were because I was only a kid. I was born into the culture and didn’t know any better.

  My parents weren’t racists by any stretch of the imagination, and they taught my brothers and sisters and me to love everyone unconditionally—skin color was not a factor. For much of my childhood, we lived next door to Melinda and Charlie Randall, who were African Americans, and we loved them and they loved us. We played with their children almost every day, and they were among our closest friends. We broke bread together and hunted and fished together. My brother Silas taught many of the Randall children how to swim in a watering hole near our farm. My family and their family were among the poorest in town; maybe that’s what brought us together. Though nobody ever told us we were poor.

  The African American families who lived in Dixie when I lived there were some of the most generous people I’ve ever known. When my father broke his back while working on an oil rig and was immobilized for more than a year, a few of the African American families in town took up a collection during the holidays because they knew my parents wouldn’t have the money to buy us kids presents. When we woke up Christmas morning, there was a basket stuffed full of fruit, canned goods, and candies on the front porch. At the time, we didn’t know where it came from, but we ate every bit of it, that’s for sure. The black families had decided to help a neighbor in need because they loved us, and I know my parents would have done the same for them.

  Even though my parents didn’t have much in terms of money and material possessions, they were always generous and hospitable, because that’s what the Bible tells us to do. Our house sat across the road from railroad tracks, and I suspect that every “hobo”—as we called them then—who traveled that particular line of tracks must have known where the Robertson house was located. My mother never turned away anyone who was in need of food, water, or clean clothes. When trains stopped in Dixie, many of the men jumped out of the rail cars and made their way to our back door. They ate whatever we were eating, whether they were black or white, and us kids would gather in the kitchen to watch them. My mother was a brave woman for inviting so many strangers into our home.

  One morning, I asked one of the men, “How is that plate of squirrels and dumplings?”

  “I’ve tasted better,” he told me.

  My mama was so mad. When he left, she said he was the most ungrateful hobo she’d ever met. I’m pretty sure she still fed him the next time he came to our back door.

  From the time I was in the seventh grade until the ninth grade during the late 1950s, I worked in the cotton fields every summer for a farmer in Dixie. We started our workdays about six o’clock in the morning and didn’t finish until around six o’clock in the evening. My brothers Tommy, Jimmy Frank, and Harold worked in the cotton fields with me, along with the farmer’s son, who was a good friend. We picked cotton and hoed weeds all day long, often carrying one-hundred-pound bags of cotton more than a quarter mile as we navigated our way through the rows of cotton. It was a long, miserable day in the cotton fields, especially when the hot Louisiana sun was beating on our backs in July and August. About the only thing that distracted us from our miserable work was hearing the beautiful sounds of the African American workers singing hymns as they picked cotton. It’s the prettiest sound you’ll ever hear. We stood shoulder to shoulder with them, lining each row of cotton, and we drank from the same water buckets and worked under the same rules. We made three dollars a day and they were paid three dollars a day. All of the money my brothers and I earned went back to our parents.

  The African Americans who worked in the cotton fields with us were some of the strongest and best people I ever ran with on the face of the earth. Their families were intact and they loved God. They loved us and we loved them. I worked with them for about three summers and they were the salt of the earth. The thing I’ll always remember is that many of the African Americans I knew attended church every Sunday and stayed there for nearly the entire day. There was a small church with a tall steeple on the edge of the cotton field, and they piled in there every Sunday morning. I mean they were there from sunrise to sunset! They often ate lunch and dinner on the church lawn. The reason they worshipped for so long, in my opinion, is that during a time when their civil rights were being trampled, they embraced the one thing that couldn’t be taken away from them—their faith.

  Basically, the people who were around us, whether they were black or white, were good people. None of us were rich, but we were content and worked extremely hard for what we had. There was very little mischief, certainly not the kind of stuff we’re dealing with nowadays. Life was slow and easy. It was only ten years or so after World War II, and I think people had a gut full of killing and hate. Like I said earlier, I know there was racism throughout the South when I was a kid, but I never saw it in the little circle where I lived. Maybe I was insulated because I was around so many good people. We simply loved God and one another, worked hard to make a living, and all seemed to get along. I like to think it was because we all had the same kind of morals and values, even though we might have looked different.

  Miss Kay and I tried to raise our boys the same way our parents raised us. We welcomed all kinds of people from different backgrounds into our home, fed them, and shared the Good News with them, regardless of their financial status, their faith, or the color of their skin. Some of my boys’ best friends growing up were African Americans. Willie’s best friend in high school, Paul Lewis, was an unbelievable basketball player. He and Willie were nearly inseparable, and before too long Willie and Jase were spending most of their time playing basketball with Paul in a predominantly African American neighborhood in West Monroe, Louisiana. One night, a policeman stopped near the basketball court where they were playing and waved f
or Willie to come over.

  “Boy, what are you doing over here so late?” he asked Willie. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous?”

  “Man, I know everybody in this neighborhood,” Willie told him. “I’ll be fine.”

  Willie often spent the night at Paul’s house, and Paul spent many nights at our house. After graduating from high school, Paul was given a full scholarship to play college basketball at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. We all watched Paul play against Shaquille O’Neal and LSU one time, and we were so excited to see him playing on TV. Sadly, Paul was arrested for selling dope and transporting drugs in Texas in 1995. He strayed from how his parents had raised him to be and got involved with the wrong crowd. It was a big mistake, and he ended up paying a steep price. When Paul was being sentenced in a federal court in Texas, I stood in front of the judge and begged for leniency. I think the judge was surprised to see me in his courtroom.

  “Mr. Robertson, are you condoning drug trafficking?” he asked me.

  “No, we need to get drugs off our streets,” I told him. “But I’m pleading for mercy in this case. I know this boy and his family. They’re good people. I love him, and we’ll help him turn his life around.”

  Despite my pleas, the judge sentenced Paul to fourteen years in prison, which he spent in federal facilities in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. When Paul was finally released from prison, Willie had him moved to a halfway house in West Monroe. Willie hired Paul at Duck Commander, and he’s now our warehouse manager. We helped him get a truck and moved him into a trailer home on my property. I knew he was a good kid who made a terrible mistake, and I was going to do everything in my power to help him turn his life around. Paul and another one of our Duck Commander employees, Krystle, fell in love and were married by Alan in my yard. Willie was his best man. Our front yard was filled with white people, African Americans, Latinos, and people of other ethnicities. It might have looked like a big bowl of gumbo, but we were laughing, dancing, and singing together. It was one of the best days I can remember in my life.

  Race is still an issue in America today. We need to get back to loving God and loving each other. Jesus commands us to love one another as He loves us (John 13:34). Our focus doesn’t need to be on diversity but on embracing unity. We’re all Americans, folks. In the beginning, each of us came from Adam. We’re all together as the human race, we’re all sinners, and we will all die. However, we can be saved together and get off this earth alive through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But it will never happen if we don’t love each other. Complexion has no bearing on a man’s character. It’s what’s inside a man’s heart and soul that matters, not the color of his skin.

  8

  ENTITLEMENTS

  Fix No. 8: Become Self-Reliant

  One of the things I’ve never been able to figure out is why sports fans like to riot after their favorite teams lose. We see it all the time. When an NFL team loses the Super Bowl or a college basketball team falls in the Final Four, a bunch of bad apples will gather in the streets, turn over cars, throw bottles, and act like hooligans. Let me get this straight: a team loses a ball game, and then its fans are ready to tear down the very place where they live? Why do they act this way? Do they actually believe their team was entitled to win the game?

  You betcha, Jack. Hey, it’s the American way. We are a society without love, a culture without Christ, communities without compassion, streets without self-control, bums with no Bibles, nerds without knowledge, punks without peace, and rebels without reason. We’re a sorry lot.

  Too many Americans believe they are entitled to money they did not earn. Now, I understand why the government needs to help certain people, like the elderly, children, military veterans, the injured, and the gravely ill. Hey, if you lose your job because of a bad economy, I don’t have a problem with the government helping you out until you can find another one. I understand that some people need help learning to stand on their own feet, and that food stamps and assisted housing are sometimes needed for a time. But there is a boatload of Americans who are abusing the system and collecting free money because they’re simply too lazy to work. They’ve become enslaved to this lifestyle and are now entirely dependent on assistance. Why should the hardworking Americans have to pay them to do nothing?

  Do you realize how many Americans would react if the U.S. government suddenly declared it was going to stop giving away free money? It would be a free-for-all in the streets! It would be complete chaos. The U.S. government fully understands the chaos that would result if they told the folks who are taking advantage of the system that they weren’t entitled to money simply because they’re Americans. So the government keeps giving them entitlements like welfare, food stamps, and assisted housing, even when they’re fully capable of working. Hey, entitlements are the very reason many of our politicians are even serving in Washington, DC. They promised their constituents that the free money would keep flowing once they were elected, and they certainly can’t turn their backs on them after the fact.

  I’ve never figured out why a segment of the U.S. population feels entitled to the wealth of America on the backs of other people’s hard work. Just once, I’d love to hear a welfare recipient stand up and say, “You know what? Thank y’all for giving us this money and taking care of our children. We really love y’all because of it.” You never hear this kind of thanks because some people actually believe they’re entitled to the money. They believe the world owes them something. Hey, news flash: America doesn’t owe any of us free money, Jack! When America does give it out, it’s a gift—not an entitlement.

  In the Declaration of Independence, it says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Hey, it doesn’t say anything about Americans having unalienable rights to receive reduced rent, government-paid cell phones, and free food. I do realize that some people really can’t get out and work—for all kinds of different reasons—but a lot of people who are getting this assistance can work. To them, I say, get off the couch, go to work, and have a little self-respect. If you’re an able-bodied person and the government is sending you free money every month, don’t you think it’s only fair that you should be out looking for a job, or at least cleaning a park or picking up trash on the side of a highway? It seems to me that you should be doing something productive to repay the free money you receive from someone else.

  I’ve never heard anyone in Washington, DC, acknowledge that the backbone of our country’s welfare system is its citizens’ concern for our fellow man. Most of the Americans who can afford to pay taxes—the ones who actually pay for entitlements—truly care about the people they’re helping. Followers of God understand that He expects us to love and help our neighbors who are in need. That’s why we’re helping them out. As it says in 1 John 3:17: “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?” God expects us to assist the helpless and needy and that’s one of our most important duties as Christians.

  Since 1964, our federal and state governments have transferred untold trillions of dollars from the middle class and wealthy to the poor. Today, the federal government is spending more than $900 billion annually on Medicare and Medicaid. Half of American households—one out of every two—are receiving some sort of government assistance. Entitlement spending has grown to be almost 100 percent higher than it was in 1960, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that entitlement spending will consume every federal tax dollar by 2048. Think about that fact, folks. Within thirty-five years, every single dollar the government takes from your paycheck for taxes will go toward non-necessities. It won’t go toward things like national defense, education, and conservation. Instead, every dollar the government takes in will go toward paying someone else’s bills. And we can’t figure
out why we can’t make a dent in the national debt? It’s $17 trillion and counting!

  The entitlement problem we face in America is cultural. It’s really that simple. We have positioned our government as an enabler, and by doing so we’ve robbed many people of their own sense of personal responsibility. Many Americans are no longer teaching their children the virtues of hard work, self-reliance, and determination. When I grew up, my brothers and I were expected to carry our weight on the family farm. My family didn’t have much in terms of material possessions and money, but we earned every single dollar we had. My brothers and I tended to the animals, hoed the fields, and helped our mother in the garden, which supplied the food we ate. Every morning, we milked the cows, fed the animals, and cleaned their pens before going to school. We were dirt-poor, and every one of us pitched in and helped out because we knew we wouldn’t eat if we didn’t.

  Sadly, it’s not that way in America anymore. For whatever reason, a growing number of Americans don’t believe they have to work. There is a state of mind in this country that makes many of us believe that because we are living on American soil, we are entitled to the American dream without investing anything in it. Many of us believe we are entitled to material things like nice homes, new cars, summer vacations, computers, flat-screen TVs, and cell phones, even if we aren’t willing to pour in the blood, sweat, and tears to pay for them. Believe it or not, regardless of what you hear on TV or read on the Internet, we’re not even entitled to a college education or job. We have to put in the work and make the necessary decisions to earn a college degree and start a career. We have to work for it.