Outdoor clothing and gear giant The North Face is offering customers a 20% discount if they complete a digital course on racial inclusion and allyship.
Titled “Allyship in the Outdoors,” the course seeks to help customers all over the world understand the challenge people of color face when it comes to “accessing the outdoors” and offer them training on how to become a “better ally and to make the outdoors a safer and more welcoming place for everyone.”
“At The North Face, we believe in the power of exploration. As individuals, professionals and companies who share a love for the outdoors and exploration, we also have a responsibility to support spaces where everyone feels like they belong,” a course description reads.
“The course focuses on perspective of race and racism in Europe, and we acknowledge that the experiences of people of colour around the globe differs. It will also provide training and resources, through 4 interactive modules, to help you be a better ally and to make the outdoors a safer and more welcoming place for everyone.”
Intended for people who work and operate in the outdoor industry, the training lasts an hour.
During the training, one learns about the limitations people of color face when it comes to enjoying the outdoors, the impact of events such as the death of George Floyd, and the aim of creating an “equitable outdoors for everyone.”
After completing modules, participants must answer questions such as, “Why should we aim to achieve equity in the outdoors?”
When it comes to allyship, participants listen to testimonials and are taught that “white privilege” means “your race and skin colour can give you access to the outdoors when others can be excluded because of historic, enduring racism and biases.”
They are also encouraged to reflect on times they have felt excluded and how it made them feel.
A further module focuses on how racism has created inequitable opportunities and outcomes via internalized, interpersonal, and institutional structures.
“There is no explicit policy that excludes people from the outdoors yet there are few people of colour. While there is no intent to exclude, the system in itself creates those barriers to participation,” according to the training.
“It’s not easy to hear about these experiences, but it helps us to understand the bigger picture and the challenges which people of colour experience in their everyday lives.”
Another portion of the allyship training instructs participants on how to handle accusations of being “too woke” on social media, telling them to flag them with a team manager, remove hurtful comments, and “respond to the comment with calm authority, in line with your [organization’s] policy and guidelines on hate speech and racism.”
In the final module, participants learn that allyship is accomplished through personal and systemic action, during which someone must build courage and question the status quo.
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The training concludes with a personal “Allyship In The Outdoors” pledge and the award of a 20% discount.
“To thank you for being an ally and completing the full course, The North Face is pleased to offer you a one-off 20% discount, to be used on The North Face website,” the discount reads. “Please enter the unique code at the checkout to activate this discount. Please note that this is not applicable to those accessing the course from North America.”
