Navigating Boundaries: From Racist to Antiracist, One White Evaluator’s Ongoing Journey

“There is no in between safe space of ‘not racist’….The opposite of “racist” isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘antiracist’. ” -- Ibrahim X. Kendi (2019)

“When you’re late to the party, enter with humility.” -- Michelle Garred (2022)

As Kendi explains, “One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist.” A very short story follows on the continuing evolution of AC Insights as an antiracist organization. I have embarked on this new road with mindful humility. A few key milestones encountered on that road are shared here in hopes of learning 1) how others – both white and BIPOC -- can relate, or not, and 2) your feedback on the vision shared for my own the way forward.

The journey within. Evaluative research and program evaluation have interwoven my career, including a PhD in cultural anthropology, work as international development practitioner, and, most recently as associate professor Michigan State University (MSU). Thinking back to 2020, I had recently read Stafford Hood et al.’s definitive characterization of “Culturally Responsive Evaluation”, and I was energized by seeing the value of my own, then ongoing, international work as a clear example of appropriate cultural response. Surely I could apply this experience locally, in this US smallish town, with no problem; I was ready to launch my new evaluation business!

Yes, as I soon discovered, my own wall of white privilege had not been fully and reflexively interrogated. Then came COVID, George Floyd’s murder, Black Lives Matter protests, and continued disruptions. For me, it took this intense emotional rollercoaster to break through that wall of white privilege to connect mind and heart. Compelled to make a series of important changes, I had to begin with myself. Among the many revelations: there are no free passes for a working-class background and progressive politics, and, as such, I have an obligation to join in antiracist work.

With so many unknowns and much to learn, I decided to delay my departure from MSU and the launch of my new business until this year, keeping a research position at MSU, using any free time to build knowledge and skill in equitable evaluation.  Several (for me new) scholar and practitioner voices have rung out and reached me at the deepest level since then. First, in “Walking Pathways toward Becoming a Culturally Competent Evaluator”, Hazel Symonette, calls for all evaluators to “embrace a twofold agenda”: 1) working from the inside-out to better understand both “self-as-instrument” and the self’s relationship to the surrounding context in which the work takes place; and 2) outside-in “expanding and enriching one’s diversity-relevant knowledge and skills repertoire and one’s professional evaluator’s toolkit”.

Another learning, this one titled “Raising the Bar – Integrating Cultural Competence and Equity”, by Jara Dean-Coffey and colleagues, promotes an intentional, up-front integration of equity with cultural competence in all our evaluation approaches. And, I continue to benefit from the growing wealth of online conversations, presentations, publications across the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and the Michigan Association for Evaluation (MAE), as they/we amplify efforts to enhance cultural response and build a more equitable structure.

Joining others on the road. Thanks to these last few years of reflective reading, workshopping and conversation, I am now in a position to make a much more skillful contribution to social justice goals in my community, and I have finally gathered the courage to launch my own evaluation consulting business.

Deeply grateful for the new guides I have found along the way, I have discovered the wealth of local people and resources to accompany me at points on this journey. From workshops on systemic and institutional racism and leading with equity, to online discussions on race, to racial healing circles, committed citizens of diverse ethnicities are building THIS beloved community from the ground up.

I must now weave together the wider conversation on equitable evaluation with these new learnings on local stakeholders and their lived experience. Today I seek to add value to diverse evaluation teams, with priority for approaches focused on social justice, stakeholder lived experience, cultural response and equity.

I am especially interested in working to raise internal capacity for Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation (CREE) readiness. This means that the evaluand, together with the evaluation team, must consider and discuss evaluation readiness assessment (e.g. the Readiness for Organization Learning and Evaluation survey instrument) together with those specifically focused on cultural response and equity (e.g. Is My Practice Culturally Responsive? self-assessment from MPHI CCRE; and The Equitable Evaluation Framework TM principles and orthodoxies. Conversations must address the tension between the two world views of equity and orthodoxy and the use of mixed methods to most fully reflect stakeholder lived experience.  Next steps include working out how to build in a sliding scale to better serve limited resource, grassroots organizations hereabouts.

If you’ve read this far, please don’t stop now. I’m hoping to learn from white and BIPOC colleagues 1) whether you can relate to my transformational learning trip to date, or not, and 2) how you might view the vision shared for my own the way forward. Please send questions, comments, suggested edits to: acinsights360@gmail.com.