THE GRIFTERS: Robin DiAngelo’s Plagiarism Exposes the Fraud Behind ‘Anti-Racism.’

Robin DiAngelo would never have registered at all in the American conversation about race except that she supplied such glib formulations of key elements in the great racial hysteria that broke out in full force after the death of George Floyd in police custody in May 2020. At that point, the demand for public excuses for riots and extortion exceeded the plausible supply. The general public had to be persuaded that it was a good idea to defund the police, decriminalize shoplifting and other urban sports, use prosecutorial discretion to let predators go free, and generally authorize a wide range of other assaults against justice and public order. That “general public” was not necessarily “white,” but it suited the narrative to describe it that way.

And that made DiAngelo’s book the gold standard of rationalization for racial violence and predation. To raise objections to the new disorder was to display “white fragility,” and therefore racism. Who believed this nonsense? Apart from the leftist agitators themselves, there were two categories who did so: the college students who were assigned White Fragility as a textbook of unquestionable authority and the white suburban women who supplied DiAngelo her core audience.

It remains to be seen how quickly DiAngelo’s standing will fade. Bogus books can have a long afterlife. I think of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú’s memoir, long exposed as fraudulent, but still appearing on college syllabi as part of the indictment of American imperialism in Central America. The concept of “white fragility” will no doubt remain standard on the playlist of the “anti-racist” Left for many years to come. But DiAngelo’s credibility with the broader public is at the beginning of the end.

It is not that plagiarism itself is seen as an unforgivable sin. It is exactly that in academic circles, but the general public is largely indifferent to the matter. What will stick to DiAngelo, however, is her shameless exploitation of minority writers and black grievance for her own personal gain. The whole “anti-racism” project was a grift from the start. It enriched the founders of BLM; made Kendi rich; and propelled Hannah-Jones to fame and fortune. But what DiAngelo will be remembered for is creating a grift on top of that grift. It was a fragile proposition all along.

There will be more, however. As George Leef writes at the Corner, Peter Wood of the American Spectator “is somewhat optimistic that Robin DiAngelo’s big days are behind her. I hope so. But it’s also possible that someone else will just copy her method and become the Next Big Thing in the racial-grievance circus.”

I think depends upon how much the left have put the ghosts of 2020 behind them. I’m not at all confident they have.