Discriminatory?

Your guest column published in May was most interesting. Kelly Smith is a leader of Black Girls Hike (BGH) and states the group was founded for black women to explore the outdoors. The photo showed no Asian or white faces visible. Correct me if I am wrong but surely this outfit is sexist and racist. Would you publish a columnist who organised hikes for white girls? I bet not and rightly so. I hike all over Northumberland as well as Scotland and there are no restrictions for race or gender for that matter.

Albert Ball, by email

Editor Guy responds: It’s not racist to create a group to encourage the uptake of walking among a group who are under-represented in the outdoors. Calling your group Black Girls Hike reflects there are those who may feel (however wrongly) discouraged or unwelcome or not at home in the world of hiking, and this group wants to reach out to them unambiguously. It doesn’t imply black girls who hike are superior, or that people of all colour should not enjoy the outdoors together, and as equals, which we hold to be self-evidently true. You can’t compare this to a white girl hiking group because the battle for white girls to be confident of finding nothing but friendship, encouragement and respect in the world of walking has been won long ago. When the world is full of mutual respect which isn’t contingent on skin colour any more than it would be eye colour or sex, there will be no need for walking groups to give themselves names which are designed to reach out to conspicuously underrepresented people. But until then, I am all for groups which speak to the under-represented, the self-conscious and the discouraged. Yes, people are all just people – black, pink, brown, tall, short to the very ends of our literally molecular diversity – and nothing about those things affects their intrinsic value as human beings, and we should pay them no mind. But that’s easy to say when you’ve been on a side that has been artificially privileged for just such an insubstantial reason for so many generations we have forgotten it is the case. The existence of groups like BGH is an example of the world getting better – of practical action being taken by good people to help make sure the wonderful benefits of walking reach as many people as possible. It’s not a wedge to divide, it’s a scoop to include. And the more of us sharing in our mutual inheritance of walking the better it will be.