The clothing company The North Face is offering a discount to customers who participate in a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) indoctrination course.
The course, entitled Allyship in the Outdoors, describes itself as “a digital course about racial inclusion and allyship.” According to the Daily Wire, the course is designed “to teach customers about racial disparities in outdoor activities” over the course of an hour. The offered discount of 20 percent, however, “is not applicable to those accessing the course in North America.”
The Washington Examiner also reported that the course is particularly focused on “race and racism in Europe” and claims 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.”
How, exactly, these alleged factors prevent non-whites from physically going outside into outdoor spaces does not appear to be something that is explained in the course. In fact, it is even admitted that “there is no explicit policy that excludes people from the outdoors.” The course also encourages participants to flag online comments that they deem to be in breach of “guidelines on hate speech and racism.”
This discount course is not the North Face’s first foray into the field of DEI ideology.
In 2020, the company founded the Explore Fund Council to use “collaborative grantmaking as a way to further support equity to the outdoors,” while establishing “an inclusivity framework to enable work at The North Face and in the outdoors more broadly.”
Among the aspects of this framework is a commitment to “plans and structural change to dismantle the harmful systems that perpetuate inequity.” The framework also encourages adherents to engage in “analyzing your own privilege, reconnecting with past trauma, or acknowledging and taking action against harmful structures.”
Although Americans might be missing out on the prospect of a 20 percent discount on their latest jacket, they might well be better off without it.