Everything's considered racist these days, from blackberries to wishing somebody a white Christmas. The world's going crazy.

thats only too true...it seems to me that people have become so paranoid of others speaking/thinking in a racist way, that they see everything as racism! maybe someday everything will be different, better...one can only hope. but as Raistlin said in one of the chronicles: "Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it."-Raistlin, so it probably wont happen :(

Hey! I made a chess set from scratch and the peices were made of purple heart and cedar... does that mean I'm racist about types of wood? No! White and black were simple colors which were easy to find and come across. Back in ancient times black peices were made of pool and other similar marbel-like substances, while the black peices were made of cobalt or onyx or something painted black. The board was made out of a complex set of pool and onyx tiles usually. The colors black and white were universal as being completley oposite colors. There are also chess sets with red and black and others with akward colors. The choice of colors doesn't actually matter, but it's considered professional to keep the peices seperated as black and white, not to reference skin colors, but colors. And there are so many differin chess rules, it is only the tradidional western rules for white peices to go first. There are some games where the black peices go first, but racism was never really implied. It was just a game. It's not like they named the peices racial slurs or anything like that...

...Its like with an old nursery rhyme here in the UK...baa baa black sheep. People complained it was racist with the referance to the "black" sheep. So they changed it to grey sheep...even though the rhyme has been around for centuries. So stupid...

I can't believe you got into the discussion. </font>[/QUOTE]I can't believe this even is a discussion.

Yes, I definitely agree [img]graemlins/agree.gif[/img] . It's also elitist! - what with the kings and queens and so on. I think they should make it democratic chess, where all the pieces are equally powerful. And sexist! Clearly denigrating women as controlling shrews since the queen goes about in any square in any direction and denigrating men where the king is portrayed as a weak willed nancy boy. I think they should replace all the pieces as non-gendered. My grammar-checker has some useful examples here for whenever a piece of text I write contains a gender-specific term - they could be people/human beings/individuals. And of course, offensive to people who are vertically challenged. The pawns (which of course will not be pawns any longer and will be able to move anywhere they want) should be made the same height as everyone else. And the replace the knight with a piece that isn't promoting use of animals as beings of dominion.

Tell me then Aelia, would you rather have the queen a controlling shrew or at the bottom of the barrel with the pawns? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Red! Thats anti-native american! Gold is close to the yellowish tint of monogoloids! RACIST RACIST!! Next we need to make the so called "queen" of a undisclosed sex, we shouldn't discriminate against peoples personal choices, let her be a bisexual or cross dresser if they want!! And the king being the primary piece to capture!? Hah! What sexist fool came up with that.

You get the point.

[ 09-30-2003, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: Azimaith ]

???