I was having a game of chess with a colleague and wanted a rematch with her after a very respectable checkmate. The sun was still loving on us, and there were no grey clouds. We had been playing that day as if we were waiting for something big to happen. So, we started refilling squares with pieces again when she asked the question as if it had fallen into her lap, “why can’t Black go first? White just has too much of an advantage over Black to start first.”

I thought that was a strange question from someone who had just won a beautiful game. Maybe she was just blaming the game’s inequities rather than giving her own skill and concentration credit as a way of sealing her victory with grace. People tend to blame the system by default, but not usually when it is beneficial to them. Sucking my teeth, I responded “Don’t be bashful. You’re a chess pro! It’s all good.”

“No. I mean it! I think it’s quite suspicious that White gets to go first.”

“You definitely are pro-Black. Well… I guess White has just as much an advantage in starting as Black has with good mid-game. We’ve been finding our way around this game for so long, it’s hardly even noticeable. Playing Black, you’re already an engineer, a decoder, a muse of innovation-”

“Okay, Shakespeare. I was just saying I wonder if when Black starts, how we’d adapt openings.”

I said to her, placing the last piece on the square and carefully spinning the board around to her, “fine. You won. Black can go first. Ain’t nobody stopping us but us, right?”

We played a few different games that afternoon, trying to justify Black’s start which sounds bazar in hindsight. At first, we just did it; Black went first. We didn’t change any pieces around; we didn’t stand on one leg or pull any rabbits from hats. It was just another game that felt just okay to play. There were no

differences in theory. It just felt like a normal sip of water from any old fountain or sitting in any available seat on the bus. But we wanted to feel more of a thrill. We needed excitement, or else the game would die there, old, and probably racist. During another game, we switched the Kings to the Queens’ squares and that, too, was just okay. There were no sparks or even any anticipation of sparks. To be frank, opening with Black’s pieces just felt like moving around in White’s territory without threat, constantly being told “good job.”

Opening with Black’s pieces had just been a small queerness with which to open, but it did not slap like it was supposed to. Sure, the Queen was placed on another square, but nothing else really changed, and although it felt right to keep trying, all those little, small changes just felt like empty apologies on repeated behaviours.

…
Chess culture can be very helpful in understanding the game; it is not just

about etiquette. After we decided on our last game, we started refilling squares to move on to other things when, at once, it hit me. We were the ones repeating the crippling behaviour, adhering to the structure of the game we sought to change. We were following rules specifically designed to set up Black’s pieces to start second (and that is the essence of voting)—using a system’s structure to change its structure. It seemed like a merry-go-round without rethinking the framework— about how the parameters of the game were actually the container holding the problem.

The board itself is terraneous. The chessboard sprawls before me like a vast, untamed landscape waiting to be explored. Each square, meticulously named and studied, becomes a familiar landmark in the terrain of my mind. As I trace the contours of the board, my fingers lingering over the strategic weak points like the vulnerable f7 square for Black, I feel a sense of ownership and mastery. But on that particular day, a seed of doubt crept into my mind, challenging the very foundations of my authority over this terrain. What had I accepted as immutable truths about the game, and were they truly beyond change? “Why do we call the Queen the most powerful piece? Is it because that’s what we were told? She can’t even jump over the fence of pawns like the brave, leaping Knight.” I was starting to get a little upset about giving up. It felt too easy, so I continued. “And while we’re here, there is more

dignity and pride capturing powerful pieces like the Queen. Why does the King have to be such a weak piece for the opponent to serve a checkmate? A checkmate on a more powerful King would make for a more equitable game, would it not? Or is that too challenging? Pitiful.”

My colleague agreed to my discontent, nodding, giving my anger permission to continue as we eased on down that road of questioning. We were so deep into that conversation that we had traveled into a semi-evolved world, sort of magical, sort of predictable. We had cursed up the Ivory Tower itself—the home of our oppression, the White House of the chess board. We were standing at the feet of the old chariot, the fortified, and stern Rook. Like most fortresses, the ground around it had been saturated with battle. It stood over us like a father, strict but with a low glow of yellow around its battlement. We opened the doors not expecting to see anything except for the loosely fitting uniforms slouching over the dried bones of fallen soldiers. They were brutes, those soldiers—strong, controlling men with small and definite answers. We hoped there would be some sort of legion of Keepers or librarians or philosophers, or priests still there left alive, so we could question their authority. That would be more uneasy than stepping over dead soldiers—questioning the makers of the rules, the Top Men. Why did White take the lead? Was there ever a time when Black took the lead? When we entered, the doors pushed dust into an echoing hall, walled with cobwebs and dust. I rubbed my finger against the brick and felt the sturdiness of the architecture. Still in tact without grit or softness. For sure, the Rook is a powerful piece.

We started up the stairs towards the battlement. I couldn’t help but to imagine how many people had died building this place. Its tall ceilings, reaching all the way up to the bottom of heaven, produced vines that crawled through cracks in corners and down all white, marble pillars. The stairs were dense, and our footsteps had surely awakened anyone who might have been sleeping there. Finally, we reached the top of the building and could see the entire board for what it was, a matrix. A matrix which had presented itself to us as plain as the crack in

the Liberty Bell but as complex as a pawn’s gambit. And then, eureka! We were so focused on the main characters—the most powerful piece and the most protected piece—that we needed to look more closely at the board. The h1square, home of White King’s Rook, is the backbone of our entire fallacy. We all see it. It is what helps many chess players orient the board to prepare the pieces. Sometimes, I unconsciously set up the board wrong not noticing it needs spinning when h1 is not white, but what if it was not wrong. What if it didn’t need spinning. What if h1 was black and not white! What if we spin the board on its side, removing all the paint from the walls and starting over fresh. There would be so much potential in starting with a blank canvas that piece would move with even more purpose and power. And that way, there would be no need to make up our own rules. The Queens are still placed in their own squares and Black could open and control the board with all the same theories from before. Our first game after flipping the board on its side was the most liberating game I have ever played, and the beginning of a new era.

Interpretation. Hundreds of years ago, thousands even, games were played alternating which color goes first placed with the same board orientation each time, and that is okay. In this story, we took “changing the game” to the cookout! It was still chess; we kept but bent all the rules; we put our own spin on it. The ways in which modern theory is taught about chess are layered with the standard unconscious understanding and practice that the grid is to be oriented specifically for the advancement of White’s pieces before Black’s pieces could even step a Knight’s hoof onto the board. I swelled with a certain dignity, that day, figuring out a solution to a structural problem! Who cares about disturbing the peace and structure of the game when it has been rigged. That was the first time I had heard the reflection of how White’s position changing, and we changed it. Right then and there.

Stop blaming systems and processes because they do not run themselves; people run them. People keep all the components of systems lubricated and functioning in the ways in which they had been taught. I encourage you to spin the

board around and check for any cracks in corners to figure out how to make trifling structures less historically damaging and more restorative. Start questioning processes, rules, and authorities that we have just normalized and become nose blind to. Those large elephants shan’t be ignored forever!

We had a real plan—we just needed the platform.

Thanks you and welcome to my tedtalks (hehe)

Marjhiq Ali