A legacy in three discourse shifts: Stafford Hood, culturally responsive evaluation, and the continual interrogation of and resistance against European/Euro‐settler colonial/capitalist hegemony in, through, and around evaluation

Abstract

AbstractThe subtitle of this special issue, “We Know Your Name,” is as much an homage to Stafford Hood as it is to the Nobody Knows My Name oral and archival historical project he begat (2001), laying the foundation for a set of written projects that highlight the contributions of evaluation groundbreakers before the Brown v. Board of Education 1954 Supreme Court decision. The purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to historicize and contextualize the contributions of Hood and culturally responsive evaluation (CRE), and (b) to engage in dialogue about the future of CRE, including its application among those advancing critical consciousness in and around academia, government agencies, research and evaluation firms, nonprofit/nongovernmental organizations, and philanthropy. We fulfill this purpose by identifying, naming, and explaining three shifts within evaluation discourse that we attribute to Hood's scholarship and activism within the field, with mixed results for the liberation of minoritized and otherized groups. CRE seems everywhere at the moment. Amidst its mainstreaming, diluting, and whitewashing, we see an opening for critique and resistance. Failure to critique diminishes both Hood's legacy and the critical and liberatory roots underlying CRE. This article honors the past while catalyzing the continual interrogation and resistance against the hegemony waged within and through evaluation.