Definitional Tension: The Construction of Race In and Through Evaluation

Abstract

Despite the centrality of racialized difference to evaluation, the field has yet to develop a body of literature or guidelines for practice that advance understanding of difference and inequality, including its own role therein. The purpose of this study was to broaden understanding of observed differences and inequality in evaluation beyond individuals and individual lifetimes. Drawing from critical theories of systemic oppression and system dynamics, it used a discourse-historical approach to answer three questions: How has the U.S. scholarly evaluation literature constructed racialized difference? How has that construction changed since the field began formalizing? How is that trajectory related to surrounding systems? Results showed four discursive patterns: (1) minoritization and ambivalence toward whiteness; (2) the invocation of diversity and inclusion; (3) the replacement of race with culture; and (4) the rise of and decoupled relationship between indigeneity and colonization. All four patterns were tied to meso-level dynamics. In the second two, existing recruitment and training efforts initiated and led by and for evaluators representing racially otherized groups at lower levels of the American Evaluation Association were elevated to the association’s board-level, where leadership and language were broadened to represent dimensions of difference beyond race. Analysis of archival documents and interviews tied this meso-level pivot away from race to macro-level discourse and policies associated with racialized neoliberalization, which attributes inequality to individual as opposed to structural deficits. Unlike “Equal Opportunity” or “Affirmative Action,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” and “culture” depoliticize difference and privatize the responsibility for—and benefits of—desegregation. In fourth pattern, literature that authors who identified as indigenous published, which explicitly complicated the relationship between indigeneity and colonization, increased sharply and remained higher following the organizing efforts led by evaluation scholars and practitioners who identify as indigenous. Their efforts remained in their hands rather than being elevated or broadened. Variation among the patterns suggests that the American Evaluation Association’s relations with its racially otherized members and with educational institutions, large firms, philanthropy, and government are linked to the field’s construction of racialized difference through existing institutional mechanisms. Whether the mechanisms counteract or amplify racialized neoliberalization depends on whether they circulate capital in ways that enable otherized groups to exercise collective agency and produce knowledge for structural change.