The Wages of Woke
Another huckster and liar
Dr. Robin DiAngelo, the bestselling author of White Fragility, claims to believe in accountability. DiAngelo used to list the "racial justice" organizations she donates to as part of her extensive "accountability statement," including a monthly "land rent" paid to the Native American tribe that used to occupy Seattle.
But when the Washington Free Beacon began contacting the organizations she listed as recipients of her largesse, DiAngelo scrubbed the siteremoving their names and the dates of her giving from the public domain—a version of the page remains available through the Internet Archive after briefly being unavailable due to what the site said were technical issues. The page was edited again as recently as Friday, when DiAngelo wrote she would begin donating 15 percent of her after-tax income, "in cash and in-kind donations," starting next month—suggesting she had not previously, as the page exhorts, given a percentage of her income large enough that she could "feel it."
This about-face is odd for a woman who has made her career demanding white people not respond defensively in hard conversations. DiAngelo vaulted to superstardom upon the 2018 publication of her book, White Fragility, which argues that all whites are racist and any rejection of that fact is only further evidence of it. To address racism, DiAngelo argues, requires the sort of anti-bias instruction she is selling.
The nationwide racial outcry that has followed the killing of George Floyd has supercharged the Diversity and Inclusion industry, and DiAngelo may be its greatest success story. While she has likely made over $2 million from her book, the speaking circuit is where she is cleaning up. One of the speakers bureaus that represents her told the Free Beacon that a 60-90 minute keynote would run $30,000, a two-hour workshop $35,000, and a half-day event $40,000.
Even before the George Floyd protests reinvigorated demand for so-called anti-racist instruction, the New Yorker had dubbed DiAngelo "the country’s most visible expert in anti-bias training." But the eye-popping numbers underscore how she has turned her academic theories about white racism into a multimillion-dollar empire of anti-imperialism. She owns three homes and is an international jetsetter
DiAngelo did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.
DiAngelo’s clients, according to her website, range from Amazon and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Unilever and the YMCA. DiAngelo reportedly charges up to $15,000 per session—a March 2019 appearance, for example, cost the University of Kentucky $12,000, as well as a $5-a-minute phone-call fee. Recent virtual events run up to $175 a ticket. The eight to ten private events DiAngelo says she speaks at each month likely net her at least $1.5 million annually.
Her book, which made the New York Times bestseller list in its first week and currently occupies the number-two slot, has only added to her success. DiAngelo's publisher said it has sold 1.6 million copies, one million this year alone. Given a conservative 8 percent in royalties, that would mean the book has made DiAngelo over $2 million.
Such lucrative gigs put the white DiAngelo on par with several prominent black commentators on race. Boston University's Ibram X. Kendi, whose book has jockeyed with DiAngelo's on the bestseller list, charges $150 for tickets to public events and $25,000 for a one-hour presentation, his representatives told the Free Beacon. Former Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has charged between $30,000 and $40,000 for public lectures.
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