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The Baseball Hall Of Fame Eliminated Cleveland’s Racist Mascot Before The Team Did

Rather than wait for the team to take long-promised action, a Cleveland player and Hall of Fame officials ended the logo’s display.

 Penn Collins
03.22.18

Jim Thome’s plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame will depict the Cleveland Indians icon with a hat bearing the team’s “Block C” logo rather than the offensive Chief Wahoo mascot that the team will continue to use in the upcoming 2018 season.

The decision to break from the logo that Thome wore for most of his career was the result of a direct request from Thome himself as well as an internal decision made by the powers that be at the Hall of Fame.

The latter issued a statement indicating that the exclusion of the racist depiction will be systematic going forward, regardless of the team’s treatment of the logo in its operations. The statement suggests that the exclusion will only be forward-looking and that existing plaques will not be altered to remove the Chief Wahoo logo.

While the Hall of Fame’s action is clear, the Indians have waivered on their promise to eradicate the stereotype from its identity. Though team owner Paul Dolan has previously offered lip service as to the promised removal, his action has been far from swift. He pledged to make the change as early as 2016 but has since stated that the team will abandon the logo in 2019 — and only then as a condition set by the league for the team’s hosting of that year’s All-Star Game.

Until that time comes (if it actually does), we will bear witness to both the continued objections of the wronged parties as well as a parade of offensive visuals that the team seems indifferent to ending.

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California to finally apologize for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II

via Library of Congress

In the months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the military to move Japanese-Americans into internment camps to defend the West Coats from spies.

From 1942 to 1946, an estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans, of which a vast majority were second- and third-generation citizens, were taken in their homes and forced to live in camps surrounded by armed military and barbed wire.

After the war, the decision was seen as a cruel act of racist paranoia by the American government against its own citizens.

The interment caused most of the Japanese-Americans to lose their money and homes.

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A man who escaped from a North Korean concentration camp just shared what life is like there

North Korea remains arguably the most mysterious place on Earth. Its people and modern day customs are shrouded behind a digital and physical wall of propaganda. Many people in the United States feel that North Korea is our "enemy" but almost none of us have had the opportunity to interact with an actual person who lives in, or has lived under, the country's totalitarian regime.

Even more elusive is what life is like in one of North Korea's notorious prison camps. It's been reported that millions live in horrific conditions, facing the real possibility of torture and death on a daily basis. That's what makes this question and answer session with an escaped North Korean prisoner all the more incredible to read.

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