Notes from a leisure son: expanding an understanding of whiteness in leisure.

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can change until it is faced." (James Baldwin, 1983)In 1965 five organizations unified their efforts to form the National Recreation & Park Association (NRPA). Of those five organizations, the American Institute of Park Executives (AIPE) is depicted in the adjoining photograph at the dinner of the 57th Annual Convention in Louisville, KY. The photograph depicts the roughly 364 park professionals, spouses, dignitaries, and other guests as they gathered and dined during the evening of 1955 that continued to cement the foundations of the field. The photograph also depicts an evening of music and festivities as shown by a six-piece band in the upper middle portion of the image. But what is more disturbing, to myself as a leisure researcher, former leisure behavior student, and former parks & recreation professional, is the large flag that is prominently displayed on the wall to the left of the six-piece band. This flag represents the Confederate States of America that seceded from the Union, formed its own government, and proceeded to enter a war with the rest of the Union. But more importantly, the flag represents the militarily supported right to own enslaved Black people.Based on what was potentially indicative with the presence of the flag, the aim of the following article is to highlight the problematic role in the United States that Whiteness plays in society, and more importantly, in leisure research. Whiteness presents a dilemma for both the researcher and the nature of research as identity and behavior are impacted. Further more, the aim of this paper is to highlight the role of Whiteness by supporting a politically expanded perspective on Whiteness. This article serves as an expansion of McDonald's (2009) paper, emphasizing the power-laden elements of Whiteness.I diverge from McDonald's (2009) paper that established three themes of Whiteness: "color and power evasiveness, normalization, and intersectionality," calling for Whiteness to be contextualized only in relationship to power, political expressions of behavior and culture, and social regulation (p. 9). In "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack", Mcintosh (1989) opened the essay with how "[she saw] racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group" (p. 10). Often times discussion of racism dwindle down to discussions of difference, a point that McDonald (2009) warns but does not elaborate further. However the three themes do not appear to place all manifestations of Whiteness as an ideologically and intentionally directed state of existence. If a group is in power then there is no longer a need to evade or avoid, power dominance allows the group to simply redirect discussions or matters (Kovel, 1984). Also, because the power of a group determines all policies, all institutions, and all behaviors, an identity is not so much normalized (without a race) but is simply the dominating and overarching fact of those policies, institutions, and behaviors (Winant, 2007).The invisibility of Whiteness is politically maintained as opposed to a happenstance social occurrence due to White Americans' numbers within the population. McDonald (2009) stated that, "intersectionality instead recognizes the complex matrices of privilege and subordination operating within and across particular contexts and institutions" (p. 1 5). Lastly, it is within this intersectionality that the fact of power is evident in Whiteness. Instead of placing this operational power as just one theme among others, I emphasize here that Whiteness has only one theme, power.In an alternative read of scholars and writers from cultural studies, critical race theorists, White studies, sociology, and psychology (Arendt, 1970; Fay, 1987; Frankenberg, 1997; Kovel, 1984; Roediger, 2007; Winant, 2004), Whiteness is the child ofWhite Supremacy, a far "darker" label of the systematic domination and power over other racial identities. …