Dialogues on Whiteness, Leisure and (Anti)Racism

Abstract

This essay offers one response to recent calls for leisure studies scholars to more effectively integrate race into their analyses. Drawing from interdisciplinary scholarship within ethnic studies, cultural studies, and gender/women's studies the article initiates a broader dialogue about the possibilities and dangers of analyzing whiteness within leisure contexts. The article outlines several studies that demonstrate ways in which whiteness operates to advantage white hegemony. It suggests how the concepts of power evasiveness, normalization and intersectionality might be applied to leisure settings and concludes with a discussion of some problems associated with the study of whiteness. The ultimate aim of the essay is to provoke further dialogue as a step toward documenting and overturning inequitable social arrangements in the movement toward justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Whiteness
• leisure
• race
• normalization
• intersectionality
• power evasiveness