Devoted chess player Bill Ware supports the idea of black students learning chess and becoming proficient in algebra. That's good. But Bill Ware also believes that chess, as it's currently played, is "racist" because it pits white pieces against black pieces, and the white pieces always move first. That's....surreal.
Bill Ware, a devoted chess player, is one of these people and has come up with a new form of chess. "By saying that white automatically is offensive, it states that white is better than black," Ware said.
His idea is to remove color superiority in chess by focusing the game on variables. He calls his new way of chess "Algebra Chess" paralleling it to The Algebra Project by Robert Moses. Moses and Ware came up with the basic concepts of The Algebra Project in 1969. Also around this time, Ware began formulating the plan of attacking racism in chess.
Moses implemented The Algebra Project in the 1980s as he taught the students in his daughter’s eighth grade algebra class. After his success, he began a nationwide plan to provide all students with a conceptual understanding of mathematics and know it as a language of practicality, not abstraction...
In Algebra Chess, Bill Ware plans on removing color superiority by allowing the pieces to either be the same or different colors such as red, blue, green, etc. The determining factor on who moves first depends on what square the queen sits on...
"My way of chess involves algebra because by removing the colors and focusing on the spaces of the board, it forces the player to use and understanding variables. If you can understand chess, you can understand algebra," Ware said.
Just like Moses, Ware said he wants the students he helps to teach the skills they learned to others. He also wants to eliminate the stereotype that if you’re white you’re right and if you’re black, step back.
Am I crazy, or is this very similar to Chris Rock's "Nat X" skit on Saturday Night Live, in which he plays a black militant who goes to any length to see racism in every aspect of life, and rails against pool as a racist game because the object is for the white ball to knock all the colored balls off the table?
Minority youth in this country face a lot of obstacles today, but the colors of chess pieces are not one of them. I find it very hard to believe that any black student learning chess has taken away the lesson, "If you're black, you have to step back" in doing so. And as Best of the Web puts it:
This is a good opening move, but it's not nearly enough. Chess is not only racist but sexist, classist and homophobic. How come you can sacrifice your queen, but if you lose your king, the game is over? Why is there an underclass of "pawns"? Oh sure, they're promised they can be upwardly mobile if they only play by the rules, but how often does a pawn actually become a queen? And why are rooks only allowed to move straight? The time has come to demand equality for all chess-Americans and free the game from its checkered history!
Posted by kswygert at March 3, 2004 04:16 PM