Global clothing brand The North Face is offering a 20% discount to shoppers who take the company’s “diversity” course.
The online course, called “Allyship in the Outdoors: A digital course about racial inclusion and allyship created by The North Face,” runs for an hour, contains four modules, and is “designed to foster a deeper understanding of the unique challenges that people of colour face when accessing the outdoors.”
Shoppers who take the course will be presented with the first module, titled “Diversity and the Outdoors: Where are we Now?” The lesson invokes George Floyd, whose death “fostered a new awakening in the outdoors that racial inclusion and representation matters.”
Another module focuses on “White privilege,” which the company explains means “that your race and skin colour can give you access to the outdoors when others can be excluded because of historic, enduring racism and biases.”
While the outdoor goods retailer admits that White people may have struggles in life, “any struggles that a white person has faced or may face is not related to the colour of their skin.”
Customers are also taught that, in their work environment, to complain to their managers if coworkers call them “woke.”
At the end of the course, customers are presented with a multiple choice quiz. A passing score entitles the shopper to a 20% online promo voucher.
The initiative comes as the NYPD searches for a diverse group of 11 “people of color” who looted a North Face store in SoHo twice in 24 hours in January. The group made off with over $4,000 in merchandise, according to CBS.
Last year a 62-year-old Black man named Ronald Jackson was arrested for robbing a North Face store in Berkeley, California. Jackson and his associate reportedly stole several jackets from the store twice within three days, totaling over $10,000 in stolen merchandise. The robbery came just weeks after a 32-year-old Black man named Alex Massie was arrested for stealing a total of $5,500 in goods from the same location.
“The irony is that The North Face is implicitly acknowledging here that all its customers are white,” commented Free Speech Union Founder Toby Young. “After all, why would black customers need to take a course about ‘white privilege’ to get a 20 percent discount? But if all customers are white, shouldn’t it be examining the beam in its own eye?”
