Shame on North Face for peddling divisive, dangerous nonsense, says Mark Dolan

May God help us. Enter stage left, outdoor clothing giant North Face, who are giving customers a 20 per cent discount if they complete an Orwellian racial inclusion course called ‘Allyship in the Outdoors’.

One module includes the contested concept of white privilege, with skin colour seemingly a defining factor in people's access to the outdoors.

That's strange. I must have missed those racial checkpoints when I was out strolling through the Cotswolds and Cumbria.

The controversial programme even urges participants to file formal complaints to their bosses if their colleagues brand them ‘woke’.

There you go, a nice bit of dystopian mind control thrown in for good measure.

Intellectual tyranny from a lovely, kind sharing company responsible for producing thousands of tons of landfill destined polyester every year.

Get your colleague fired if they call you woke.

That kind of political brainwashing would have even the leadership of North Korea blushing.

Now clearly there is racism in our society. It's a huge problem.

But ideas like white privilege, often taught in our private and public institutions as facts, are deeply controversial, they're divisive and they are contested by many.

Why? Well because terms like white privilege are rooted in so-called Critical Race Theory or anti racism, which is different from what most of us think, which is that racism is bad and should end CR2 Critical Race Theory, anti-racism and so-called White privilege contend that you're basically racist if you have a certain skin colour.

Quite the accusation.

This progressive ideology is, in reality, incredibly regressive as it sees people of colour as victims subjugated by their white masters. And amazingly, it believes in racial segregation, whether it's theatre shows for black-only audiences away from the so-called white gaze, or safe spaces for minority groups at university and elsewhere wildly patronising.

Of course, none of this brings people together. Black only theatre shows directly mirror apartheid in South Africa and the horrific two-tier Society of 1950s America.

Racism is humanity's worst crime and remains a big problem in all societies.

It must be tackled, but not with more prejudice, more segregation and more racism.

Ultimately the spirit of this bonkers campaign by North Face goes against the leader of the civil rights movement in America, Dr Martin Martin Luther King. This is a guy who said we should all be judged by the content of our character, not the colour of our skin.

He dreamed of a society which saw no colour, but now corporations like North Face want to see only colour.

North Face are obsessed with the colour of your face. One question in this creepy test for customers asks you to make a mental tally of how many black people you've seen in the countryside.

Surely that's something only a horrible racist would do.

Counting up people of colour, make it make sense.

Now maybe there are some elements of critical race theory which are valid, and it's important that we have a national conversation about how people of different backgrounds are treated, whether it's work or health opportunities or everyday prejudice.

But it's not the job of a huge multi-billion pound corporation to do that.

It's their job to sell us warm gloves, reliable walking boots and cosy jackets for the winter.

You want comfortable clothing that keeps you dry, not a political lecture based around controversial ideas, many of which are offensive to and contested by people of colour themselves.

For example, Don't Divide Us is a campaign group made-up of leading ethnic voices and others in the UK who share Martin Luther King's dream of a colour blind society.

Their director is the academic Alka Segal Cuthbert posting on X this week.

They said: “The North Face race test is completely ridiculous.

“Encouraging customers to agree that the outdoors is oppressive to black people in exchange for a discount isn't going to help them reverse their year on year losses.”

Meanwhile, writing in the Times, the brilliant columnist Jawad Iqbal said “The North Face test is shameful discrimination”, he wrote: “This harebrained corporate wheeze shamefully encourages the very discrimination and division that it claims to be against.”

And as Iqbal points out, if you've got to do a racial awareness course, does that include people of colour to get the discount?

Or do The North Face think that all of their customers are white? That sounds like prejudice too. What a mess.

The North Face should be focused on the colour of their rather expensive jackets and trousers and nothing else.

Shame on them for peddling this divisive, dangerous nonsense.

If they carry on lecturing their customers, the North faces profits will head South.

This pathetic outdoor brand should zip it and take a hike.