Exactly. As the movie "Looking for Bobby Fischer" made clear, we in the US live in a non-chess culture. Like mathematicians, chess players and honor-roll students in high-school are ignored while jocks get lots of attention.
Belonging to a subculture can be empowering for people who aren't world-class out of the gate like Bobby, but that's only available for a very small minority in cities. Elsewhere, there's little heavy competition or opportunity to evolve.
The US gets it's ass handed to it in international math competitions because math, as with most intellectual endeavors in the US, gets no respect. The news proves everyday that 2/3's of us are clueless about most things that developed in the 20th century.
