Woke hiking groups in Oregon are creating segregated hiking paths for people of color so they won’t have to worry about encountering someone who might be “prejudiced.”

A black actor with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival named Tyrone Wilson goes hiking on his days off, acting as a volunteer hike leader. Wilson is one of the founders of ‘Unlikely Hikers,’ ‘OutGrown,’ and ‘People of Color Outdoors.’

Unlikely Hikers is described on its website as a “diverse, anti-racist, body-liberating outdoor community featuring the underrepresented outdoorsperson.” It is a group for “adventurers who are plus-size & fat, Black, Indigenous, People of Color, queer, trans and non-binary, disabled, neurodivergent, and beyond.”

According to Oregon Live, Wilson’s groups “want to make recreational public land feel more welcoming to people who are more afraid of encountering a person with a prejudice than a mountain lion.”

Being in the state with the third highest mountain lion population in the United States, Oregon hikers should definitely be more concerned about mountain lions.

“I am an unlikely hiker, in culture, body, and anything that would traditionally be considered the visual ideal of a hiker,” Wilson told Oregon Live. “And I’ve given all my efforts to attract people to Monday Hike who don’t think the outdoors belongs to them. It has been a real effort.”

Of course, all people should feel like they are able to hike and experience the natural world. However, by labeling specific groups as”unlikely hikers,” Wilson is perpetrating a stereotype that certain people are not accepted by the hiking community and making people feel like they need to overcome barriers or join a special group just to partake in an outdoor activity.

The idea that we should be created trails that are only for minority hikers is an absurd idea. Segregating hiking trails only further divides our country by race and identity, pushing the U.S. away from a united nation that celebrates its diversity.