Hey there beautiful people. Welcome to Fanta the podcast for all those complex and complicated conversations about the gray areas in our lives. I'm light. I'm bright and you better get used to it Jared Hill and I'm Cheryl's Davis standing in for the off

and imitated never duplicated Travelle Anderson coming up on the show today. We've got one of our favorites. Charles is this your third or third time on the show I think?

Uh, third maybe fourth is hard to keep track. See you on this something like that. Yeah, Charles has been on the show numerous times. You were like I think one of the first straight people to like really be able to take up some space on the show.

I'm straight man at that. And we are really grateful to have you here tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Uh, yeah, I mean, I guess I'm your resident smart black person, depending on what this topic may be by my day job. I'm a professor at the University of Michigan where my work focuses on issues of race racism, systemic oppression and structures of domination.

I also the pleasure of being a chair at and Travelle's frequent guests for all things like skin and they're there. So she's glad to be here and glad to stand in. Give my journalist shots approached off here. See if I can do a good job. Maybe you'll have me back.

Listen, but don't push it. Okay. Well, just let's get through this one first. All right.

Travelle is real territorial about shit. So fair enough could be a throbble. Well, I mean, listen, we have to talk to the network, but I'm sure something could get worked out. We got to get into past the popcorn.

There's an interesting story that comes from the today. So I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, but we never really got to talk about it. Go ahead, Charles.

So last month, the video of Kevin Ford, a 54 year old black man who worked as an employee of HMS host, which hires and staffs, food service vendors at Las Vegas airport hosted a Reddit as a Ford was acknowledged for having ever missed a day of work in 27 years.

Mr. Ford received several items from HMS host, the company contracted to hire employees from restaurants like Burger King and Sinabon and included a reusable cup candy, a movie ticket was accompanied by a slice of chocolate cake from local managers.

Kevin was on the today show and one of the anchors asked him how he did it. Here's his response.

Never even thought of missing a day. The manager brought me some a present and they said, this is, you know, for your 27th year anniversary.

I loved it. I just, you know, I and then I said, let's do a little shout out video for and stuff and I was just grateful to have it. I'm still grateful.

I've been through a lot. Everybody's been through a lot. So I look toward the smaller things in life and, you know, I'm grateful for everything. I'm grateful for every day I wake up that I could go to work that I could be a good citizen, be a good American and just, you know, do my part.

So while Ford obviously expressed a deep appreciation and recognition in the video, online viewers are a bit more critical, noting that he deserved far greater recognition and reward for his long time service.

Serena Ford, one of Ford's daughters who established a go for me for her father, noted that part of his commitment to consistency was to take care of her and her older sister as a single dad.

And in order to maintain his eligibility for retirement, he was steadfast in showing up to work.

After Ford's story became viral more than 8,000 contributions have been made from the donors with a total of more than $250,000.

Now, Jared, when I heard this story, you know, I felt both surprised and kind of sad. I mean, how did you kind of take it?

Yeah, so I saw this B.S. God posted the clip from the Today Show and I commented on it and I was trying to figure out what I was feeling and I wrote, quote, there's, hmm.

There's something that feels incredibly admirable and exemplary about him and his story, but in a very respectability kind of way that white supremacist capitalism delivers so uniquely.

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