More Than Pawns When Cameras Stop 

By: Camille Samilton

September 16, 2026

Participating in a one-sided match requires more than just moving the same tired pawn. In chess, sometimes you need to reset the pieces by rearranging them across the board to find the strategy needed to win.

In last week’s article, I discussed four important pieces of the game that have been overlooked: Schools using diversity propaganda to mask hidden segregation-like situations, systemic hostility, abandonment of minority students, and inequitable funding to schools with lower economic status.

With this first move, we need to protect the king on the board, bringing up the most critical matter: How we fund our schools. For years, local property taxes have allowed the wealthy to build educational fortresses with the opposing team effectively protecting this piece on e8, the king. To stop this, the government must pool property taxes and distribute funds based entirely on students’ needs, not merely for the wealth of each neighborhood. We must strip this advantage away, so a child’s education is never determined by a zip code.

However, fixing the unfair distribution of money is only the opening play; we must also tackle the opposing team’s queen, the legal games that mask modern segregation. As pointed out in my last article, Jonathan Kozol showed how politicians enjoy claiming that integration “failed” just so they can sit comfortably in a deeply-separated society. To interposition the queen, we need to break up these hyper-segregated zones, using monthly checks to ensure school lines are no longer used as borders to keep the disadvantaged students out.

Checkmating this uneven playing field won’t happen overnight, but the game immediately changes the moment we refuse to let children be treated as disposable pawns. By fighting for equitable funding, we must break through the king’s defenses—smothering it, in fact, so we can successfully turn schools into places that truly support mental health, erasing this stylized segregation.

When all of this happens, we will finally have smothered mate!