Success Academy Bed-Stuy Middle School took second place in the Under 14 Division at the All-Girls National Chess Championship in Chicago last weekend. The team beat eight competitor schools including prestigious Dalton School and Chapin School. Although diligent preparation emboldens the skill necessary for mastery of chess fundamentals, playing on the national level brings its own unique set of challenges.
Chess, by and large, is dominated by players raised in privileged, upper-class socioeconomic environments––especially at the national stage. Prestigious private-preparatory schools, such as the Upper East Side’s, The Dalton School, and The Chapin School, are famed for producing prodigious talent, year after year, effectively outnumbering young people of color from inner city public schools.
Stark racial and gender divides are commonplace upon entering the hall of any chess tournament. With over 1,500 grandmasters in history, only three have been of African American descent, and only 2% of these chess grandmasters have been female. Even when considering the prestigious, annual World Chess Championship, originating in 1886, a woman has never won.
