Outdoor clothing and gear company The North Face has incited outrage among white people and conservatives with its United Kingdom-based digital course on allyship and racial inclusion, which the company is offering people a 20 percent discount to complete.
The Denver-headquartered company’s course that launched in November starts off by stating that the hour-long session is meant to “help you understand the challenges that people of [color] face when accessing the outdoors” and to offer training and resources for course takers to become better allies.
A recent article in The Sun led to more people hearing about the course – and becoming outraged about it.
The course, which states people should take it with “an open mind, includes statistics like, ”People of [color] are three times more likely than white people to live in an area that is nature deprived,” and “a 2017 study found that just 26.2% of Black people and 25.7% of Asian people spend time in the countryside, compared with 44.2% of white people in England.”
At least one person – an Irish writer – completed the course and found it “genuinely eye opening, very thoughtful and mindful,” as they wrote on X.
However, the online course hasn’t gone over well with many others on the social media platform, where several people, in some cases who identify themselves as conservatives, have blasted The North Face as being a woke company that they now intend to boycott.
One person shared on X that they found the course “completely bonkers.”
The course’s mention of “white privilege” seemed to upset some people on the social media platform.
“In this particular context we refer to ‘white privilege’ meaning that your race and skin [color] can give you access to the outdoors when others can be excluded because of historic, enduring racism and biases,” the course says.
“White privilege, however, does not imply that white people have not or cannot experience struggles in life; it means that any struggles that a white person has faced or may face is not related to the [color] of their skin,” it continues.
One upset X user wrote, “North Face would cease to exist without its white customer base. Naturally, they’ve attacked their white customer base for existing.”
An X user posted that the company’s course turned them off of spending money on the brand. “I used to be a regular customer. Gone.”
Another person advised The North Face to “sell clothes, not politics,” while someone else accused the company of now “joining the ranks of companies pushing woke garbage and divisive racism.”
A U.K.-based group called The Free Speech Union posted on X that the course is “open to all customers willing to learn woke dogma by rote in exchange for slightly discounted access to its clothing range.”
The North Face told The New York Post in a statement, “The North Face has always believed the outdoors should be a welcoming, equitable and safe place for all. This course aims to bring light to the barriers to entry preventing all people from sharing equally rewarding experiences in the outdoors.”
