Robin Jeanne DiAngelo (née Taylor; born September 8, 1956)[1] is an American author working in the fields of critical discourse analysis and whiteness studies.

[7] DiAngelo received her Ph.D. in multicultural education from the University of Washington in 2004,[8] completing a dissertation titled Whiteness in racial dialogue: a discourse analysis.

[14][15] For over twenty years, DiAngelo has offered racial 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 for The New Yorker, columnist Kelefa Sanneh characterized DiAngelo as "perhaps the country's most visible expert in anti-bias training, a practice that is also an industry, and, from all appearances, a prospering one".

[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".

"[38] Isaac Chotiner, in The New Yorker, wrote that in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, DiAngelo's book served as a guide for many of the millions of Americans questioning systemic racism, though he notes that some critics have described her definition of white fragility as broad, reductive, and condescending towards people of color.

[8] According to Harvard University sociologist Frank Dobbin, there is no evidence to indicate that anti-bias training leads to increases in the number of women or people of color in management positions.

[8] In February 2021, an online training course bearing her name came under scrutiny after a major social media backlash against The Coca-Cola Company, following the leak of pictures showing excerpts from an employee webinar.

The course, titled "Confronting Racism" and offered on the LinkedIn Learning platform, attracted negative publicity concerning DiAngelo's claim that "[t]o be less white is to: be less oppressive, less arrogant, less certain, less defensive, less ignorant, more humble".

[46] In August 2024, DiAngelo's doctoral dissertation, Whiteness in racial dialogue: A discourse analysis from the University of Washington, came under scrutiny due to accusations of plagiarism, including from minority academics.

[47][48][49][50][51] 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.