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Just when you thought claims of racism could not get any more puerile, the World Economic Forum has published an article alleging black people are excluded from the outdoors.

That’s right. Hiking is ‘racist’.

The evidence? UK author Rhiane Fatinikun went for a walk in a park and didn’t see many black people.

White privilege now extends to going outside!

“The lack of representation in hiking is clear for all to see. I wasn’t keen on the prospect of venturing out alone or joining a typical hikers’ group where there’d be nobody I could identify with.”

This point says far more about the author than it does about the white supremacists guarding hiking trails and the “whites only” signs posted along footpaths in order to keep blacks isolated indoors.

Why would the author not “identify” with other humans, regardless of melanin, based on a mutual love of hiking?

The only way she could possibly feel excluded from hiking is if she herself is so racist that she cannot form meaningful relationships with people of different skin colours.

Self-Absorption

Imagine needing to see a reflection of yourself wherever you go. That Fatinikun identifies only with people who look like her is evidence of a problem with her, not with the outdoors.

But no, black people have been systematically excluded from the outdoors; and so Fatinikun founded Black Girls Hike “to encourage black women to explore the UK countryside in the safety of sisterhood”.

So the Manchester resident has decided to tackle exclusion by creating a group that determines membership based on skin colour. And the World Economic Forum want to champion this!

The article doesn’t say what precisely it was about the outdoors that Fatinikun believed excluded her. By her own admission, she just didn’t want to go walking with people who weren’t black.

“I’m proud we are challenging stereotypes and showing people that the outdoors is for everyone,” she said.

Walking is for whites has never been a stereotype. And forming a ‘blacks only’ walking group doesn’t show that the outdoors is for everyone.

Advertising Required

Fatinikun complains that walking in parks is “not even marketed at black people”.

What would such a marketing campaign look like? Perhaps it could go something like this …

“Don’t let the racist grass intimidate you. Ignore the white supremacist trees. Open the front door, start walking and keep going!”

If the marketing campaign doesn’t work, perhaps governments should force black people to hike. Or bribe them with tax incentives. Or maybe whites should be excluded from bush trails until the quota of back people increases.

Maybe local mayors could stand at the end of hiking trails and pat black people on the head as they conclude their walks.

Too far?

This infantile obsession with skin colour has gone way too far. It’s not enlightened, it’s stupid. It’s not progressive, it’s divisive and regressive.

The only thing British walkers are regularly excluded from is the sun. And that applies to all Brits, regardless of their skin colour.

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Originally published at The James Macpherson Report.
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Photo by Evan Chasteen.