Welcome to our listener-supported podcast, Money Talk, unpromised absolute financial truths behind financial perceptions with hosts Ed Sutkowski and Chuck LeFebvre. Let's listen in.Ed: Welcome. I'm Ed. Chuck is on vacation or otherwise occupied. I think he's hunting somewhere. My special guest today is Joseph B. Anderson Jr. We'll be discussing Joe's journey from zero, I'll call it money, to I'll call it fairly substantial wealth over a long period of time. But more specifically, we'll discuss Joe's beginning at Topeka, Kansas, and then at West Point, and then Vietnam, and then the White House fellowship, then General Motors, and then Tag Holdings, LLC. Joe, are you with me?Joseph: I am with you. I'm glad to be here. Good afternoon.Ed: Yes, it's my pleasure. looking at all the information, I must tell you the most impressive part of your CV, I'll call it, is these medals: two silver medals, this is Vietnam, two Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars, three Army Coordination medals, eleven Air medals. Were you doing anything other than fighting and getting medals, Joe?Joseph: Yes, there was a little break for R&R in between. It wasn't overly aggressive, but I did get into a few conflicts.Ed: Yes, We’ll discuss that. What it's like to almost be the subject of someone trying to kill you, or conversely, you trying to kill someone else. This idea of having served two tours in Vietnam, we'll address that. Let's go back to the beginning of Joe in Topeka, Kansas. February 12, 1943. Your father was a widower with one son, your mother two daughters from a prior marriage. You were an Eagle Scout, I believe, and more specifically, you graduated with honors from high school. Joe, the Brown v the Board, tell me about your relationship with the plaintiff in that case.Joseph: Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which included several other states by the way, was a Supreme Court decision that desegregated schools across the United States, so that segregated schools are no longer could be considered separate but equal. I grew up in Topeka, Kansas and started grade school in the fifth grade, kindergarten. From kindergarten through 6th grade, my grade school was fully segregated. So, there were nothing but African American teachers and African American students during that period of time. That was my experience in grade school in Topeka, Kansas.Ed: Then middle school, that was not segregated, is that correct?Joseph: That is correct. When I left grade school, the law, the Supreme Court decision had desegregated the school. Even before that, the Supreme Court decision during my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade, the junior highs in Topeka and the high school in Topeka were all desegregated. There was no segregation there. What I recently found out, because I'd always wondered why, is somebody said they thought the primary explanation is that the city, the community did not have the financial resources to create segregated junior highs and segregated high schools. They stopped with the four segregated Black grade schools in Topeka, Kansas.Ed: How did you feel about that? Being a Black, a gentleman with brains in a system that first was segregated and then not segregated? How did you make the transition intellectually?Joseph: The reality, first of all, is that's just the way it was, and that's what I knew, et cetera, and the entire environment and community reflected that. It was not only the grade schools, but the Boy Scout troop that I belonged to was all Black. The YMCA that I went to was all Black, the swimming pool that I went to, et cetera. It was truly segregated in the community, even beyond the schools.That's what I was born into, that's what I knew, and it was just the way it was. My parents were working parents in that environment, and they did what they needed to do. The church I went to, of course, was all Black. So I didn't know anything different. So there were no issues. When I transitioned to junior high school, again, the junior highs had been used to having Hispanics, and African Americans, and Whites together, so there was no big deal there. It just was making the move to the next level in an integrated environment.Ed: One of your favorite sayings is, "It is what it is." It seems to me that whatever the circumstances were, you were flexible enough intellectually to accommodate to those different environments. Is that fair, or what am I missing here?Joseph: What you're missing is I didn't know anything different. So I wasn't flexible enough to accommodate it. To your point, it was what it was, it is what it is. If you grew up in another community, whether it's another religion or another race and so forth, and that's the way things are in that community, that's all you know. I wasn't looking at television or interacting with others to say, "Well, that's the way it is where you are, but that's not the way it is wherever I was to go." I didn't know anything different. It wasn't an intellectual exercise. ...
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2023/02/2823 分
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