Wal-Mart and Target struck with hidden racism signs

[CrimsonTide4]

(Aug. 30, 2002) *So much for shopping at discount department stores. Ku Klux Klan business cards were found at an Alabama Wal-Mart store, and just one day later, a shopper was appalled to find white supremacist symbols on apparel sold at a Target store. Wal-Mart and Target are the largest discount chain stores in the US.
In Muscle Shoals, AL, shopper Mary Mehberg was flabbergasted to find business cards from the KKK inside a book at a patriotic display in the store last Tuesday, reports the Associated Press.

"I was so startled I read it three times," said Mary Meherg, who saw the cards while shopping at the Muscle Shoals store on Monday. "I couldn't believe it."

Mehberg found the cards tucked in copies of a book written by Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne Cheney, heralding the courage of heroes on United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed September 11 last year.

The cards reportedly asked for a $3 donation to the Klan for information on helping white children, "America’s new minority." Wal-Mart staffers immediately removed the cards and reported that they had found KKK literature in other products in the store before.

"It's definitely not something we want in our store," company spokeswoman Sharon Weber told the AP. "Now that we've learned about it, we need to get them out."

Just one day later, Joseph Rodriguez was shopping in a Target store and discovered apparel in the store that featured the logo "88," and "eight eight," which is a neo-Nazi code for "Heil Hitler" because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Rodriguez, a video-producer for the University of California, Davis, said he learned the meaning of the white power code from a documentary on racist rock music. He took a piece of the clothing line to the manager and complained.

Target officials first learned what the symbols meant early this week when information about Rodriguez's complaints were put on the web site of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nationwide tracker of racist organizations, reports the Sacramento Bee.

"Nobody knew what it meant," Carolyn Brookter, director of corporate communications for Target, told the Bee. "We certainly apologize that this was out there. We would not have any white supremacist symbols out selling as merchandise."

Target Stores has issued a recall to its 1,100 stores and has ordered that they stop selling the merchandise. The apparel, which included baseball caps and shorts, were manufactured by UTILITY, one of Target's private labels. The store's buyer is currently looking into how the offending type came to be used.