cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/382278
I’m partially memeing bc i get that it’s a game from like 3000 yrs ago, but its a very easy modification.
Is there a reason why this isn’t done? Or changing the colors to something else? (Blue vs red, which seems to be video game standard)
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It’s incorrect, inflammatory and counter-productive to imply the team colours in chess are racial and not just two arbitrary contrasting colours. The equivocation of skin tones to anything remotely ‘black’ or ‘white’ is a harmful attitude.
Do whatever you feel like. Chess variants exist. Flip a coin to pick who goes first. It’s just silly to try and introduce politics into the artificially symmetrical game.
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In order to make a change to the rules and tradition of anything, easy or not, it must be justified. Is there any reason to change the colors or rules concerning which player opens?
a youtube vid was talking about racism in gaming and mentioned chess, talking about how white is more likely to win due to first move
It sounds like someone inventing conflict, trying to justify their video and get attention, rather than any meaningful social issue.
Additionally, what would be accomplished if two intentionally neutral (at least for now) designs were chosen? Would this help society in any significant way? I’d rather put that effort into something that would actually help counter racism instead of pretending changing colours of a board game is helping the lives of peoples being systematically abused.
The problem with that interpretation is that it is entirely unclear how the colors white and black have anything beyond the most superficial relation to the skin colors we associate with those words.
The two usages and meanings are distinct; a white person refers to a white-skinned person, not someone who is the color white. The same holds for a black-skinned person.
