Getting Beyond Marginality and Ethnicity: The Challenge for Race and Ethnic Studies in Leisure Research

Abstract

Over the past 30 years leisure scholars have produced a substantial literature around the dynamics of race and ethnicity in leisure behavior. Two major social forces have impelled research questions involving race and ethnicity to the foreground of leisure studies. During the 1960s, the marginal social and economic conditions of racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. and abroad arrested attention of public policymakers and social scientists. In the U.S., the Civil Rights movement climaxed, leading to the dismantling of longstanding institutional barriers to political participation and public accommodations, including specific actions targeted at public parks and other recreation areas (Murphy, 1972). The heightened awareness of racial inequality during this period brought about sharper focus on black-white differentials in outdoor recreation participation and leisure activity preferences. Initial research questions dealing with race and ethnicity were contextualized by the socio-political agenda of this era. Thus, it is not surprising that differential rates of participation in public recreation and leisure programs exhibited by different ethnic groups, primarily between the minority and white majority, received the greatest scrutiny from researchers. More recent demographic changes in North America represent the second major factor drawing attention to racial and ethnic issues. Numerous books, articles, and governmental reports have called attention to the rate of growth and projected increase of ethnic minorities relative to nonHispanic whites (e.g., Murdock, 1995; O'Hare, 1992; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1994). Using detailed cohort-projection techniques, Murdock and associates (1990, 1991, 1996) and Dwyer (1994) have examined how growth of ethnic minority populations is likely to impact participation in a variety of outdoor recreation activities. Their analyses suggest that racial and ethnic minority population growth will be reflected in the composition of activity participants. Specifically, they project that growth in the number of participants in several leisure activities will be due primarily to increases among non-white populations. While only in the last several years have these trends been reported in the scholarly literature, practitioners have witnessed the shift in demographic trends up-close and have been challenged to re-orient programs and services to meet the needs of a more racially and ethnically diverse clientele. Largely in response to such factors, researchers have sought to understand ethnic patterns in leisure participation, attempting to make sense of the race and ethnicity dynamic in leisure settings. It is fitting that the Journal of Leisure Research would devote a special issue to race and ethnicity some 30 years removed from the Civil Rights era and in the midst of the current ethnic transformation of North America. Coincidentally, this issue appears exactly 20 years after Randel Washburne's (1978) seminal article on black underparticipation in wildland recreation in Leisure Sciences. Washburne's piece was not the first empirical study of race and ethnic effects on leisure participation. Several research reports, symposium papers, books, and book chapters predate his publication (e.g., Jones, 1927; Mueller & Gurin, 1962; Meeker, Woods, & Lucas, 1972; Cheek, Field, & Burch, 1976). His contribution was the articulation of a conceptual basis-marginality and ethnicity-for interpreting race and ethnic effects in leisure participation. This special issue provides an opportunity to evaluate the extent of progress in understanding race and ethnic effects in leisure. Moreover, the marginality-ethnicity framework stands as a useful benchmark to gauge where the current literature is positioned both theoretically and empirically with respect to race and ethnic concerns. As part of the special issue, several observations about the state of the race and ethnic studies literature within the leisure field will be discussed. …