Oh, curses. There’s my chance of getting 20 per cent off the price of a lilac and black Jazzi Gore-Tex jacket or a Y2K bum bag gone. I was getting quite excited at the thought of getting a fifth off the price of outdoor clothing just for sprinting through a mini online course. But I am sorry to say that after a few pages of the Allyship in the Outdoors — a digital course on racial inclusion and allyship created by North Face — I gave up. It’s back to the sturdy waxed jacket for my next walk up a mountain.
In case you hadn’t heard, North Face is a US retailer of stuff for skiing, trekking and running. But it has gone beyond selling backpacks; it is now in the business of consciousness raising. The outdoors for them is not, as you may have thought, a place where there’s a certain camaraderie; it is, rather, a site of exclusion for ethnic minorities which North Face is out to make us aware of.
