Category: Argument

Why So Many Baseball Players Are Dominican

Nine Dominican youth league players, in uniform, sitting in their dugout.
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If you pay any attention to major league baseball (or even if you don’t), you’ve probably noticed that a disproportionately large number of star players are from the Dominican Republic, the Caribbean nation that shares its island with Haiti. Is that a coincidence? Are Dominicans just naturally and inexplicably gifted at the game of baseball? Well, no and (probably) no. The explanation involves much more than just sports; to get the full story, a Vox investigative team dug into two centuries of history and economics that involve, among other things, the Atlantic slave trade, the Cuban revolution, the business of baseball, and sugar. This video report was published in July 2023.

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How Hair Discrimination Affects Black Women at Work

Black and white photo of a young Black woman with an elaborate hairdo shown from the neck up; the background is solid green with purple dots.
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Image credit: HBR Staff/Suad Kamardeen/Unsplash

A person’s job may involve talking with clients, solving logistical problems, operating a drill press, analyzing data, supervising a team of interns, or any of a zillion other workplace tasks. What does their hairdo have to do with their job performance? Silly question? Think again. Janice Gassam Asare, writer and CEO of a diversity consulting firm, discusses the everyday reality of hair discrimination faced by Black women in the workplace, and she lays out some concrete steps for addressing the problem. Her May 2023 report appears in the Harvard Business Review.

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Warped Front Pages

Stacks of thick and glossy fashion magazines on a newstand. A copy of the New York Times is displayed on top of the magazine stacks.
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Image credit: Charles Guerin/Abaca/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Images)

Do mainstream, large-circulation daily newspapers offer non-biased coverage of national news? Good question. Depending on whom you ask, responses will probably be Hard Yes, Hard No, and all points in between. To find a more concrete and precise answer to the question, a team of research analysts made a systematic study of the front pages of two major national newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, during two specific periods leading up to national elections. David M. Rothschild is senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research; his four co-authors include academics and researchers. Their report was published by the Columbia Journalism Review, an online research and watchdog organization, in November 2023.

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LSU’s Angel Reese, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, and the Double Standards of Race in Sports

LSU forward Angel Reese making the “you can’t see me” gesture in front of Iowa guard Caitlin Clark during an NCAA championship game in 2023.
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Image credit: MADDIE MEYER/GETTY IMAGES

A basketball player waves their own hand in front of their own face and gets called out for behavior that some reports and social media posts called “thuggish.” Wait. What? Did that really happen? Well, yes, it did. Here’s the context: an NCAA tournament championship game, two top teams, each with a top-notch star player. So far, nothing remarkable, right? Ah, but did we mention that it was a women’s game? And that the hand-waving player was a Black woman leading a mostly Black team from a school in the South, while the other star player was a White woman leading a mostly White team from the Midwest? Is it making sense yet? Award-winning sports journalist William Rhoden details the situation and adds his own argument in this April 2023 Andscape essay.

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Yes, This New York County Actually Used the Crazy Spider Voting Sticker Design That You Saw Online

A round “I voted” sticker shows a childish drawing of a green-legged spider figure with a smiling human head. The face is in shades of purple with big red eyes and multicolor teeth.
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Image credit: CNN

News giant CNN publishes a detailed report about an “I voted” sticker that is being distributed in a medium-sized county in New York. Wait. This is newsworthy?! Really? “I voted” stickers are usually the most yawn-inducing bits of civic display imaginable. Well, not this time, and not in Ulster County, New York, where the winning entry in a county-wide contest shows a childish drawing of a brightly colored monster with insect legs and a scary human face that says “I voted.” CNN reporter Zoe Sottile filed this report in November 2022.

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How and Why Do Consumers Access News on Social Media?

Two cell phones side by side, one showing a screen grab from the Guardian’s “Fake or for Real” feature, the other showing a screen grab of a Washington Post TikTok.
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Image credit: Reuters Institute

It’s not news that fewer people than ever get their news from newspapers. Many people, particularly younger ones, use social media to stay informed of events. But how many people? Who are they? Which platforms do they use? And why have these become the sources of choice? Good questions, right? Political science professor Simge Andı researched them extensively; her detailed report was published in June 2021 by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

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Baldo Cartoon: Text Punctuation

Cartoon in which a young man is appalled that his father uses a period in a text message; the young man’s companion agrees.
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Have you noticed that texting styles vary a lot between generations? [Insert eyeroll emoji.] Silly question. Of course you have. There are many cultural factors that contribute to style variation in texting, and age/generation is certainly one of them. When you notice it, is it amusing? Annoying? Endearing? In this August 2021 Baldo cartoon strip, the youthful main character reacts with horror to a text from his dad. Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos’ strip has appeared in numerous daily newspapers in the US for more than 20 years. Its humor is principally centered around family life, and like many other daily strips, the characters never age.

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