On Monday, various national media outlets reported that outdoor gear and clothing giant The North Face was offering customers a 20% discount if they completed a course on racial inclusion and allyship in the outdoors. Apparently, the discount is only valid in Europe, and the course is tailored for a British audience, but Americans can still take it. Curious about what racism looks like in the outdoors — I’m more familiar with the indoor variety — I took the course. As I did, the San Franscico-based puffy vest retailer taught me that in England, brown people are terrified of outdoor sports, and in some cases, might not even be aware of the outdoors at all. Listening and learning, I wrote my thoughts as I went along, stream of consciousness style.

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“Ask yourself, how many people of colour do you see on the slopes, on the hills, or on the trails?” reads the second slide of The North Face’s anti-racism-in-the-outdoors training program.

“Hey there, you ever seen a black guy ski?” I murmur to no one in particular.

This is probably because the video was made in the UK, and clearly tailored for a UK audience. Apparently, they’ve got a big problem over there with the blacks and Indians and such being afraid of the woods. The San Francisco-based clothing retailer tells me that only 1% of people from ethnically diverse backgrounds visit national parks despite being 14% of the population. (With those numbers, it's crazy that BLM started here and not over there!) The next slide tells me that the POCs in England don’t do outdoor stuff because of poverty, discrimination, as well as “language, culture, safety, perception and awareness.” Awareness hit me hard. Imagine living in a society that won't even tell you about the outdoors on account of your race. Briefly, I wonder if it's “okay,” that minorities don’t want to go into the woods, different strokes for different folks, as it were. Remembering that I am supposed to be an antiracist, I put this out of my mind. If a humble, kindhearted multinational outdoor clothing and gear retailer with nothing to gain thinks it's a problem, then surely it must be. Black people must go to the woods, until then, none of us are free.

I discover that there are four units in the anti-racism lesson and there are quizzes at the end of each one. I keep getting the answers wrong and consider abandoning the project, but I don’t because whenever you fail the test they just let you retake it, like one of those kids at school with a “hyper son of a single mom” type learning disability. In any case, by guessing through the wrong answers on unit one I learn about affinity groups, which I thought were quasi-political groups formed by people who were gay in a non-sexual way at tech companies. But apparently, they are also used as a way for British ethnic minorities to learn about the outdoors free of whitey’s judgmental gaze.

After enough guessing I advance to Unit 2. There are a lot of videos on this one and you aren’t allowed to skip them, but you also aren’t required to watch them in order either, so if you pause to watch another, you eventually have to go back to the first one and finish it before it lets you pass. The people in the videos seem nice and fairly normal. The first is this biracial girl who says something about how when she went rock climbing as a kid they made her put on a helmet, and the helmet messed up her hair. The second is a Swiss snowboarder guy who says people used to call him the n-word in Switzerland, which sounds like something the Swiss would do. The last is this black lady who says nothing about race at all, it was more of a weight thing with her but she didn’t dwell on it too much. After her is a woman in a full Niqab headscarf (that’s the dead serious kind) who started an Islamic hiking group that she says isn’t necessarily a strictly Muslim lady thing, but seems to be so with all the pre-scheduled bowing and praying and so on. I stop and wonder whether The Nort Face sells compasses that will help them determine which way Mecca is.

After that, the puffy jacket company tells me about all the different types of privilege that we as white people have, like hiking clothes (although I suppose this applies more to British whites who got that sweet discount at the end), being around other white people in the outdoors, having grown up knowing the outdoors is fun (remember, British minorities are afraid of it), having outdoor safety skills, and other white people things.

After that, there is a minigame thing that explains the process from Exclusion to Belonging. It warns that integrating affinity groups and individuals could take generations, but says it's worth a shot anyway. Judging by this, it could take longer to integrate British hiking trips than it took to integrate Mississippi, which is very daunting.

Another quiz.

Unit 3 has videos about the three different types of racism that occur in British outdoor sports: Internalized, Interpersonal, and Institutional/ Structural. An Indian girl does the video on internalized racism and tells this story about when she was at an outdoor shop and the salesperson helped her white friend pick out a backpack. After watching the video, I am no longer sure what internalized racism means. After that, it's the biracial girl and she’s talking about her hair again. After that they bring out some Irish broad — they’re still not white over there — who's head of DEI at a non-profit I assume is connected to The North Face in some way. She says there are not enough POC instructors teaching outdoor sports, which makes sense given the aforementioned awareness problem they’re dealing with.

After this, I am required to answer more questions. Here, I learn that if someone accuses you of being “too woke” on social media, a thumbs-down reaction is not enough (see below). Also, I learn that if my company’s marketing campaigns aren’t diverse enough I should make a really big deal about it. I drew up some recommendations of my own. If your company isn’t very diverse, consider paying a black person to stand for staff photos in your place. Or, if you are unable to find one, apply a bit of bronzer and pose for the photos in a wheelchair. It's important that everyone do their part.

The last unit is about allyship. It's about celebrating the presence of people of color in the natural world because in England they’re afraid of the outdoors and some of them aren’t even aware of it, so it's a really big deal for them. As a person with white privilege (knowing about the outdoors and owning a North Face Jacket) being an ally is also about speaking for people of color, and not waiting for them to act. That’s a really big part of it, and I know that because it was on the test.

After that, they said something about intersectionality and I kinda tuned out, but then it was done, and I got my certificate, and my 20% discount that I cannot use, but UK readers can, either on a first-come-first-served basis, or indefinitely, I’m not really sure how the code works.

All I’ll say is, I don’t know how the Brits have made all these poor brown people so terrified of the outdoors, and that’s just the ones who are even aware of it! They’ve got a big problem on their hands over there. The slavery and Indian genocides notwithstanding, it's good that we in America got out while we did. I hope that our British readers put this code to good use, for outdoor-related social justice, and that you do your part to end this scourge of whatever it is you’ve got going on over there. Change starts with you!

— River Page