Author of ‘White Fragility’ Accused of Plagiarizing Minorities

Robin DiAngelo, author of the book White Fragility, has been accused of plagiarizing minority writers.

The Washington Free Beacon recently obtained a complaint filed with the University of Washington outlining 20 instances of alleged plagiarism in her 2004 doctoral thesis, Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis. Per the New York Post:

Among the examples cited are two paragraphs reproduced almost entirely from Northeastern University’s Thomas Nakayama — who is Asian-American — and coauthor Robert Krizek, in which DiAngelo fails to provide adequate attribution.

Another example in the complaint shows DiAngelo allegedly playing fast and loose with a paragraph written by Asian-American professor Stacey Lee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In it, rather than clearly delineating that Lee had summarized the work of scholar David Theo Goldberg, the information was presented in such a way to appear as though DiAngelo herself was providing the summary herself.

Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, said that DiAngelo’s work rises to the level of “forgery” in certain circles. “It is never appropriate to use the secondary source without acknowledging it, and even worse to present it as one’s own words. That’s plagiarism,” said Wood.

When questioned about the accusations, University of Washington spokeswoman Dana Robinson Slote told NY Post, “We are committed to the integrity of research conducted at the University of Washington.  All complaints are carefully reviewed.”

As noted by the Free Beacon, DiAngelo remained a relatively obscure professor upon the publication of her book until the death of George Floyd in 2020 shot her to national stardom.

“DiAngelo emerged in 2020 as the high priestess of progressive racialism. Her most famous book, White Fragility, published in 2018, flew off the shelves following George Floyd’s death, beating out How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi—a black man—on USA Today‘s best-seller list,” noted the outlet.

“DiAngelo has become a staple of teacher trainings, corporate affinity groups, fundraisers, and ‘antiracist’ book clubs.

She even addressed 184 members of Congress, including then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), about what it ‘mean[s] to be white,’ telling the Democratic caucus in 2020 that its members would continue to ‘hurt’ black people until they reckoned with the question,” it added.

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