Stardate 20011027.0607 (On Screen): I'm not sure there's a web site more different from mine than
Wanker County, and yet it's one of my daily reads. It's a collaborative effort by six high school dudes (except that Jon seems to have gotten grounded by his parents, but it also seems that he's coming back). Most of them are in Michigan but one of them, Jord, lives in Arizona. Jord's a
good looking young man; I suspect he has no trouble at all getting babes. But he happens to have rather darker skin than his fellows (and his icon on the header reflects that fact). One reason I enjoy reading this page is because they have such a different view of the world than I do; they're smart and sassy and creative and 30 years younger than I am. They're interested in girls and rock music and video games and girls and the world around them and girls (which is as it should be), but they're not fools and they don't have their heads wedged, the way it seems as if a lot of kids that age do. They're part of the cam-page culture on the web, which I'm not. I'm glad guys like them exist.
But they won't if security guards have their way. Jord was trying to take pictures of a building in Phoenix and he got surrounded by guards who seized his camera and grilled him, demanding ID and so on. It's almost certain that this happened because his skin is darker. (The irony is that Jordan is Jewish.) It's important that we not give in to the temptation to foster a rebirth of racial suspicion and prejudice in this country. He treated the incident with some humor, but there's clearly some bitterness there, too -- and rightfully so. Jord is no criminal; he's just a high school student. Unfortunately, he's run into this more than once; it seems to be a fact of his life simply because his skin is a bit dark. (Of course, living in Arizona and looking vaguely Mexican probably doesn't help any.) (discussion in progress)
Update: Wanker County has been promising a site redesign for months; it appears that no sooner did I link to them then they decided to do it and pulled their site down. Oh, well.
