An example of racism in chess - take a look at the FIDE federations and you'll see it smacks of colonialism. Scotland and Wales, for example, are FIDE members when neither is a sovereign nation and they are absorbed into Great Britain as one team for the Olympics.
In Europe, regions like Catalonia or Siberia would have a stronger claim than Wales to be a FIDE member. Tamil Nadu could make a similar argument and imagine how strong their Olympiad team would be! The composition of FIDE reflects Western European colonialism and is outdated.
chess acts more of a euro-centridc and people don't wanna change that. that's a problem .
@lizani said in #31:
> An example of racism in chess - take a look at the FIDE federations and you'll see it smacks of colonialism. Scotland and Wales, for example, are FIDE members when neither is a sovereign nation and they are absorbed into Great Britain as one team for the Olympics.
> In Europe, regions like Catalonia or Siberia would have a stronger claim than Wales to be a FIDE member. Tamil Nadu could make a similar argument and imagine how strong their Olympiad team would be! The composition of FIDE reflects Western European colonialism and is outdated.
Wales and Scotland have their own chess federation, rating systems and teams at Olympiads. There is no Great Britain team at Olympiads and I'll also note that Scotland and Wales have their own football teams too. Merging it with the ECF would be as popular as merging Singapore into Malaysian chess federation.
Catalonia has it's own independence movement so there's no reason not to have their own association if they want one along with Basque region too. Siberia while fine in principle especially if Russia undergoes Balkanisation although I would note that Siberia is ethnically diverse and could itself break into smaller areas along with things like Dagestan, Chechnya, Tatarstan etc with full list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics_of_Russia but in practice anyone advocating for a separate FIDE federation will fall out a window.
For India I'm surprised Tamil Nadu is mentioned since the states most pushing for independence are Jammu and Kashmir.
Anyway, back to the main point of the post, I don't think Gukesh gets a lack of recognition or respect due to racism. I think instead it's just that he's not the #1 in rating list. For example Kramnik was always under the shadow of Kasparov who he never surpassed in rating. Add to that Khalifman who was WC while ranked 10th, Ponomariov who was ranked 6th at his peak and Kasimdzhanov who peaked at 11th. Gukesh D and Ding also have never been ranked #1 and it's hard to get respect as WC when there's someone higher rated around since I think few people can put their hands on their heart and say current WC is the best chess player alive at this moment in time.
Having said that it's a fantastic achievement being WC and they'll go down in the history books having deserved the title as they played best at the event. Gukesh in particular is quite young, has plenty of time to improve and could even surpass Carlsen at his peak
Gukesh is a worthy successor to Carlsen, but the first thing that crossed my mind when he became champion was "I doubt he will capture the imagination of the North American public the way Kasparov and Carlsen did. Surely Carlsen is still the man, and this does not help Gukesh' image. He will have to prove himself, the way Karpov did, and the way Kramnik didn't. I say we give it a little time.
Maybe this is more nationalism than racism? If Gukesh were American, it would probably (sadly) be a different story.
@korchnoi_fan said in #34:
> Gukesh is a worthy successor to Carlsen, but the first thing that crossed my mind when he became champion was "I doubt he will capture the imagination of the North American public the way Kasparov and Carlsen did. Surely Carlsen is still the man, and this does not help Gukesh' image. He will have to prove himself, the way Karpov did, and the way Kramnik didn't. I say we give it a little time.
>
> Maybe this is more nationalism than racism? If Gukesh were American, it would probably (sadly) be a different story.
i agree too an extend . but then again ' US defaultism ' is also something similar to racism . it is more like ' Euro Defaultism' in chess . if gukesh was from somewhere in europe , things would have been different .
@lizani said in #31:
> In Europe, regions like Catalonia or Siberia would have a stronger claim than Wales to be a FIDE member.
Siberia is bigger than Europe and it's somewhere else
When Vishy Anand was top, he was loved by everyone, all over the world, and he still is. Where was this terrible racism then??
@GettingMuchStronger said in #37:
> When Vishy Anand was top, he was loved by everyone, all over the world, and he still is. Where was this terrible racism then??
there were no magnus fans back then .
@aminson123 said in #35:
> i agree too an extend . but then again ' US defaultism ' is also something similar to racism . it is more like ' Euro Defaultism' in chess . if gukesh was from somewhere in europe , things would have been different .
That's the first time I have ever heard the word "defaultism". Who is being defaultist, me or the North American I talk about? I am from Canada, which is a chess backwater compared to Europe. You can make more money in Canada playing Texas Hold'em. The only chance we have at "having" a champion if one moves here.
I would expect that Gukesh gets more respect from the general public in Europe than in North America. If you are saying this is not the case, then I would have to reconsider my remarks.
@lizani said in #31:
> An example of racism in chess - take a look at the FIDE federations and you'll see it smacks of colonialism. [...]
This is one of the broadest definitions of racism I ever came across, for sure.