Peak 2020: Chess Is Racist Because White Goes First or Something

The events of this year keep exploring new reaches of insanity that none of us thought possible when we were stupidly saying “Happy New Year!” to each other. It’s March 121st, 2020 as I begin writing this and I’m exhausted just thinking about how much year is left. After reading about the “RAAAAAAAACISM” mob trying to cancel John Wayne I figured it couldn’t get much weirder.

Then I found out that chess is racist.

Rational people don’t politicize everything or imbue games with racial overtones. I can’t help but think that people who do are just the most wretchedly miserable creatures on Earth. I used to give people like that the benefit of the doubt and assume I was merely witnessing media-fueled brief outbursts of awfulness. You get to know a few of them better, however, and you realize that they have turned being offended into a fetish.

Chess is a game that is thought to be almost 1500 years old that began in India and isn’t exactly steeped in antebellum American politics. The reasoning behind white moving first seems to have evolved over time and was for a long time not a hard and fast rule.