Major League Baseball took a major step forward by mandating that the Cleveland Indians remove their racist logo for the 2019 season.

Although, larger problems exist as both the league and the team will continue to sell merchandise with the racist logo.

The logo is a cartoon depiction of a Native American dubbed Chief Wahoo. Th mascot has bright red skin and a single feather sticking out behind his head. This blatantly racist depiction of a people who have endured so much discrimination is unacceptable.

According to National Public Radio, indigenous people have been protesting the mascot for many years.

“(Chief Wahoo) has been publicly protested as a racist and offensive image for decades.”

The logo change is long past due. It is still a positive change, and I applaud Major League Baseball (MLB) for finally getting their act together.

Unfortunately, the team will still be called the Cleveland Indians even though the name has been protested along with the logo.

They follow in the footsteps of many other teams who have had culturally appropriative logos or names and changed them for the better, but it still is not enough to make up for the pain the team’s brand has caused.

Other teams like the University of North Dakota (UND) who were previously named the Fighting Sioux have now changed both their racist logo and the name to the Fighting Hawks.

While UND and the Indians prove that positive change to their logos can occur, other teams still fail to find an inoffensive mascot.

For example, the National Football League (NFL) has teams like the Redskins, another team that unapologetically uses a culture as a mascot. Others, like the Chiefs, use culture as a team name.

The very worst part is that these teams make profits off of the racist merchandise they sell. MLB will not discontinue the Indians logo from its stores only from the Cleveland jerseys. To profit off of the pain of a marginalized people is despicable.

According to Forbes, the Cleveland Indians are worth about 920 million dollars in total. About 102 million of that net worth is due to brand alone.

This means that MLB makes many millions of dollars by selling Native American culture. People are not mascots, and culture is not for sale. It’s time for the sports industry to wake up and stop appropriating.