Amari King: Bringing a fresh perspective of the pawn in the game
{Photo: Amari, left featured with Wilmington based journalist at the NC Local News Lab Summit}
Everyone has a story—one that’s often overlooked, underestimated, or misunderstood. In a world that moves fast, we rarely take the time to listen, to truly see the depth of the experiences that shaped the people around us.
As a high school student at Yadkin Valley Regional Career Academy, I’ve become increasingly aware of how complex the world is, and I’ve found that viewing the world through metaphors and conceptual thinking is one of the most powerful ways to unravel the entwined nature of the world’s complexity. I compare this to a game of chess. Which partially drew me to journalism and my role as a youth correspondent with Davidson Local. I am new to the team but I have already learned a lot. Through this work, I’ve had the opportunity to explore the stories that might otherwise go untold—stories that reveal not only the struggles and triumphs of individuals but also the unseen threads that connect us all.
Chess is played on an 8x8 grid with 64 squares. The goal is to checkmate the opponent's king. Besides the king, there are other pieces: the queen, rook, knight, bishop, and pawn. Each piece moves uniquely: rooks in straight lines, knights in L shapes, bishops diagonally, queens both diagonally and straight, and pawns one space at a time.
The pawn is a naturally underestimated piece due to its lackluster moveset which leaves it easy to be attacked by other pieces with more adeptness such as rooks, knights, bishops, and queens. In the chess community it’s commonplace to sacrifice pawns, to use them as bait, scapegoats, to carelessly toss them away. In some circumstances we are all pawns, we may not possess movement and versatility that allows us to move across the chess board of life and this may lead us to being overshadowed by other pieces and people.
Yet its the unique ability of the pawn that grants it an inherent potential, that being that if a pawn moves fully across the board it can change into any other piece on the board besides another pawn or king. The pawn is not simply a weak piece, it is a representation of the strength within potentiality in board game form.
Sometimes we are pawns, sometimes we’re the weakest piece on the board that gets easily conquered by other pieces, sometimes we’re underestimated and sometimes that plays to our inner strength.
I myself find myself playing the role of a pawn in many settings as a 16 year old, I may have set myself on the path towards success as a dual enrollment student at Yadkin Valley Regional Career Academy and as an intern at Davidson Local. Yet my potential is not always respected, my capacity to adapt through severity and opposing odds like that of a pawn going against other pieces is underestimated, and in many cases I’m tossed aside and overshadowed by other pieces.
So I want to dedicate this article to all the interns, the misjudged dreamers, the underestimated optimists. All of you that understand the struggle of having your potential not respected, know there is a time where your potentiality will actualize and manifest. Like a chess master, you must guide and protect your pawn to traverse the board past all obstacles so it can fully evolve.
Because in the chess of life, checkmate is not when the game ends, it is only the beginning of another chapter in life’s grandest complexities.
