MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Nationwide retailer Target has pulled merchandise from its 1,100 stores that bear an "88" symbol or the words "Eight Eight" because of their association with white supremacist groups that use that as code for "Heil Hilter."
Target apologized for any "discomfort" stocking the $7.99 boy's caps and $12.50 men's summer shorts caused. The products were manufactured under a private Target label.
"Target is a family-oriented store and company, and it is not our intent to carry any merchandise that promotes hate," Target Corp. said in a statement. Customers can return the merchandise for a full refund even if it has been worn.
The "88" refers to the eighth letter of the alphabet, "H," according to the Anti-Defamation League.
"This number, this symbol is quite widespread in the white supremacist culture," Mark Potok of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center told Thursday's Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Target officials learned of the neo-Nazi message from Joseph Rodriguez, a video producer/director for the University of California-Davis, who saw shorts with skulls and "EIGHT EIGHT" printed on them at a Target store in Sacramento in June.
"I got very angry about it because I'm a person of color. My name is Rodriguez, and these white power groups want to see people like me dead," he said.
Rodriguez, 51, said he had watched a VHI documentary on hate rock that explained the symbols stood for "Heil Hilter."
