New Frontier In Woke Capitalism

North Face is a left-wing clothing company that is breaking new ground in wokeness. It now has a program, where anyone who completes its “allyship” training module can get a 20% discount on North Face products. This is truly a new frontier: a company is actually engaging in price discrimination, offering lower prices to people who share (or pretend to share) its political views.

Intrigued by news stories about North Face’s left-wing discount, I signed up to take the “Allyship in the Outdoors” course. For reasons stated below, I didn’t complete it. But this is what I saw, starting with how North Face introduces its course:

It is all about race. There is, you see, a problem. Not enough POCs are venturing into the outdoors:

The statistics are grim, especially in England. Hey, North Face is international:

But let’s pause here for a moment. There is not a single human activity that is engaged in by equal proportions of members of different ethnic groups. Not one. In the U.S., blacks live mostly in cities. Urban populations do not hike and camp as often as rural populations. So what? Rural populations do not play basketball as much as urban populations. Should North Face offer discounts to rural whites for that reason?

Of course, North Face is on board with the Black Lives Matter Movement, even though the Black Lives Matter organization turned out to be a criminal fraud. Should someone tell them?

North Face thinks it is really important that women in full head coverings participate equally in the great outdoors:

Here’s the thing: I haven’t done so much hiking and camping in recent years, but I did quite a bit when I was younger, as well as skiing, fishing and other outdoor activities. There is no “barrier” to anyone doing any of these things. The national and state parks are open to all. Anyone can hunt or fish. Just buy a shotgun or a fishing rod. You don’t have to be a left-wing “ally” to encourage anyone who feels the urge to get outdoors. Maybe by joining the Boy Scouts, although I don’t suppose North Face would approve of that.

One thing about a far-left outfit like North Face, they lay it on the line. “Equity” means equal outcomes, i.e., exactly equal percentages of all ethnic groups engaging in all outdoor activities:

Let me know when all ethnic groups are equally represented in the NFL, and then I will get back to you.

Before getting too far into the “allyship” lesson, I had to take a quiz:

I clicked on f), but that turned out to be a thought crime:

So that was the end of the road for me. I had to either sign on with North Face’s rightthink, or forgo my opportunity for a 20% discount. Since I would not, under any circumstances, consider buying a product from North Face, it was an easy decision.

What to make of this? North Face has ventured beyond any other “woke” company, to my knowledge, in offering discounts to people with stupid political beliefs. Can that possibly work? I don’t know. The adage “Get woke, go broke” sometimes holds with regard to companies that rely on American sales, like Bud Light, but it generally doesn’t with regard to companies whose sales are mostly international, like Nike. I am not sure where North Face falls on that continuum.

I do suspect that North Face, which pretends to be “green,” is embarrassed by the fact that its products are made mostly from petroleum, and that may partly account for its insistent leftism.

So, is there an opportunity here for conservative companies? Should conservative companies (assuming there are some) offer discounts to customers who assert belief in values like patriotism and free speech?

It isn’t going to happen. Why? Because conservatives believe in inclusion and equality.