Consolidating Whiteness in Leisure Places: Answering the Call for a Fourth Wave of Race Research in Leisure Studies

The fourth wave of leisure studies challenges researchers to investigate the social construction of race through leisure, in contrast to understanding race as a variable. Floyd (2007) challenged us to think about the future challenges and trends around race and ethnicity in leisure studies. Though significant progress has been made since the 1970s, we still have far to go in assessment of race and ethnicity in leisure. The objective of this manuscript is to answer the call made by Floyd for an anticipated fourth wave task of “understand[ing] how leisure practices create, reinforce, and perpetuate racist practices in contemporary America” (2007, 249). We apply a theoretical framework that centers racism and whiteness, drawn from race scholarship across fields: the sociology of race, Critical Race Theory (CRT), whiteness studies, settler colonialism studies, and Black and Native Studies. We apply this framework to investigate the storytelling at two National Park Service (NPS) monuments which we provide as case studies to analyze how spatialized historical storytelling consolidates structural white supremacy in the parks, despite a rhetoric of inclusivity. Only once we understand how racism and white supremacy are embedded in NPS narratives can we begin to make changes to reduce white supremacist storytelling in leisure practice.