Robin DiAngelo
DiAngelo in 2020
Born	Robin Jeanne Taylor (1956-09-08)September 8, 1956 (age 69)
Occupations	Author, consultant
Spouse	Jason Toews
Academic background
Education	University of Washington Seattle University
Thesis	Whiteness in racial dialogue: a discourse analysis (2004)
Doctoral advisor	James A. Banks
Academic work
Discipline	Education
Sub-discipline	Whiteness studies Critical discourse analysis
Institutions	Westfield State University
Notable works	White Fragility
Notable ideas	White fragility
Website	www.robindiangelo.com

Robin Jeanne DiAngelo (néeTaylor; born September 8, 1956)^[1] is an American author working in the fields ofcritical discourse analysis andwhiteness studies.^[2][3] She formerly served as a tenured professor ofmulticultural education atWestfield State University and is currently an affiliate associate professor of education at theUniversity of Washington. She is known for her work pertaining to "white fragility", an expression she coined in 2011 and explored further in a 2018 book titledWhite Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

DiAngelo was born Robin Jeanne Taylor into a working-class family inSan Jose, California, the youngest of three daughters born to Robert Z. Taylor and Maryanne Jeanne DiAngelo.^[3][4]

She lived with her mother in poverty until her mother's death from cancer, after which she and her siblings lived with her father. She became a single mother with one child in her mid-20s, and worked as a waitress before beginning college at the age of 30.^[5]

In her youth, she believed that her poverty led toclass oppression, though it was only later in life that she believed she was benefiting fromwhite privilege, even while being "poor and white".^[6] In 2018, DiAngelo stated that her "experience of poverty would have been different had [she] not been white".^[6]

DiAngelo earned a B.A. with a double major in sociology and history fromSeattle University in 1991, graduatingsumma cum laude as classvaledictorian.^[7]

DiAngelo received her Ph.D. in multicultural education from the University of Washington in 2004,^[8] completing a dissertation titledWhiteness in racial dialogue: a discourse analysis.^[9] Her Ph.D. committee was chaired byJames A. Banks.^[3]In 2007, she joined the faculty ofWestfield State University,^[10] where she was namedassociate professor of multicultural education in 2014.^[11] She resigned in 2015.^[12] She now serves as affiliate associate professor of education at the University of Washington.^[13] She holdshonorary doctoral degrees fromStarr King Seminary (2019) andLewis & Clark College (2017).^[14][15]

For over twenty years, DiAngelo has offeredracial justice training for schools, nonprofit organizations, universities, and businesses,^[16][17][18] arguing that racism is embedded throughout American political systems and culture.^[2] In a 2019 article forThe New Yorker, columnistKelefa Sanneh characterized DiAngelo as "perhaps the country's most visible expert inanti-bias training, a practice that is also an industry, and, from all appearances, a prospering one".^[19]

DiAngelo has published a number of academic articles and books on race, privilege, and education.^[20] In 2011, she co-wrote with Ozlem SensoyIs Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Critical Social Justice Education, which won theAmerican Educational Research Association's Critics' Choice Book Award (2012) and the Society of Professors of Education Book Award (2018).^[21][22]

That year, DiAngelo published a paper titled "White Fragility" inThe International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, thereby coiningthe term.^[8][23][24] She has defined the concept of white fragility as "a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves". In the paper, she wrote:

White people in the U.S. and other white settlercolonialist societies live in a racially insular social environment. This insulation builds our expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering our stamina for enduring racial stress. I term this lack of racial stamina White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimal challenge to the white position becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves including: argumentation, invalidation, silence, withdrawal and claims of being attacked and misunderstood. These moves function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and maintain control.

Since 2016, DiAngelo has regularly led workshops on the topic.^[25][26] In 2017, the term "white fragility" was shortlisted by theOxford Dictionary forWord of the Year.^[27]

In June 2018, DiAngelo publishedWhite Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,^[28] which debuted on theNew York Times bestseller list and remained there for one hundred fifty-five weeks.^[29] It has been translated into eleven languages, including French, Italian, German, Japanese, Dutch, and Portuguese.^[30]

By 2020, DiAngelo had become a leading figure in the fieldantiracism training.^[8] The efficacy of this training is disputed.^[8]

In June 2020, during theGeorge Floyd protests,White Fragility reached number one on theNew York Times list.^[31] The July 26, 2020 edition of the list marked the book's 97th week in the Paperback Nonfiction category, where it was ranked number one.^[32] The book received mixed critical reception, with positive reviews in sources includingNew Statesman,The New Yorker,Publishers Weekly, and theLos Angeles Review of Books,^{[33][34][35][36]} and negative reviews in sources includingThe Atlantic andThe Washington Post.^[37][31]Publishers Weekly praised the book as "a thoughtful, instructive, and comprehensive book on challenging racism."^[38]Isaac Chotiner, inThe New Yorker, wrote that in the wake of themurder of George Floyd and the rise of theBlack Lives Matter movement, DiAngelo's book served as a guide for many of the millions of Americans questioningsystemic racism, though he notes that some critics have described her definition of white fragility as broad, reductive, and condescending towardspeople of color.^[39]

In June 2021, DiAngelo publishedNice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm, a continuation ofWhite Fragility.^[40]

She was featured in the 2024Daily Wire anti-DEImocumentaryAm I Racist?, in which she is shown paying $30 inreparations to the documentary's Black producer. DiAngelo was paid $15,000 for her appearance. She subsequently donated that sum to theNAACP Legal Defense Fund after realizing she "had been played" by the filmmakers.^[41][42]

In August 2024, DiAngelo's doctoral dissertation,Whiteness in racial dialogue: A discourse analysis from theUniversity of Washington, came under media scrutiny when a confidential complaint of plagiarism was made public by theWashington Free Beacon.^{[43][44][45][46]} On September 11, 2024, the University of Washington dismissed the complaint, stating that it "...falls short of a research misconduct allegation that would give rise to an inquiry."^[47][48]

• DiAngelo, R. (2012).What Does it Mean to be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy. Counterpoints (New York, N.Y.). Peter Lang.ISBN 978-1-4331-1116-7.
• Sensoy, O.; DiAngelo, R. (2017).Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education. Multicultural Education Series (2nd ed.). Teachers College Press.ISBN 978-0-8077-5861-8.
• DiAngelo, R. (2018).White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Beacon Press.ISBN 978-0-8070-4741-5.
• DiAngelo, R. (2021).Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm. Beacon Press.ISBN 978-0-8070-7412-1.^[40][49]

Wikiquote has quotations related toRobin DiAngelo.

• Official website

• 1956 births
• Living people
• 21st-century American non-fiction writers
• 21st-century American women writers
• American anti-racism activists
• American educational theorists
• American education writers
• American women academics
• American women non-fiction writers
• University of Washington College of Education alumni
• University of Washington faculty
• Westfield State University faculty
• Whiteness scholars
• Writers from San Jose, California

• CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from July 2020
• Articles with hCards
• Pages using infobox person with deprecated parameters
• Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia