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Well, well, well.
It seems that Robin DiAngelo, the critical race theorist behind the book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism has been accused of plagiarizing two Asian-American scholars for her 2004 PhD thesis.
She joins a growing list of academics who have recently been accused of plagiarism, including four from Harvard (former President Claudine Gay, former Chief Diversity and Inclusion officer Sherri A. Charleston, Title IX coordinator Shirley R. Greene, and assistant sociology professor Christina Cross) and former Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, who coincidentally just resigned after the anti-Israel protests on her campus.
The news about DiAngelo immediately brought back memories of that time when Greenwich Public Schools hired the Capital Region Education Council (CREC) in 2020 to lead a group of approximately 50 Greenwich Public School (GPS) administrators in "White Fragility training" based off DiAngelo's book.
In case you are not familiar with the book, the review reads:
“Antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’. Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue."
One of the examples of 'white fragility' in the book suggests that the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement is being contorted into ‘All Lives Matter’ by white people who feel threatened. Another example of 'white fragility' "manifests in anti-immigration policies by President Donald Trump’s administration, as shown in the travel ban on people from majority Muslim countries,” DiAngelo argues.
DiAngelo says that, "if we cannot discuss these dynamics or see ourselves within them, we cannot stop participating in racism. The good/bad binary made it effectively impossible for the average white person to understand— much less interrupt— racism."
It seemed to us that GPS was hell-bent on indoctrinating educators into believing the progressive "systemic racism" narrative after the death of George Floyd.
Parents wanted to keep the false systemic racism narrative and the tenets of critical race theory out of the classroom. That's one of the primary reasons that Greenwich Patriots first came together.
We had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain more information about the white fragility training because GPS was not exactly forthcoming with the details.
Turns out, an unnamed Greenwich administrator purchased 50 copies of the book, and did not file for a reimbursement. At that time the paperback listed for $8.15 on Amazon — so the anonymous donor likely spent at least $407.50 to purchase the books, if not more.
The consulting agreement between CREC and Deputy Superintendent Ann Carabillo was to provide up to 11 hours of technical assistance, including virtual book club facilitation and training for the group.
Another email uncovered by FOIA revealed the training was led by Dr. Gerald Hairston, a program manager for CREC with more than a decade of experience "doing the work" of pushing equity and social justice.
The commencement date for the White Fragility training was September 29, 2020.
An invoice for $2,750 (which equates to $250/hour) was issued to Carabillo on November 13, 2020, with a handwritten note indicating the item was to be covered by state / federal grant money as a Title II expense.
Connecticut’s Title II guidance states that school districts can use Title II Part A funds to cover a wide range of strategies and activities to support the quality and effectiveness of teachers, principals and other school staff.
The Greenwich administrators taking the training had weekly reading assignments from the book, after which they were required, “to practice discussing and engaging the readings” according to Dr. Carabillo.
It sounded a like a "struggle session" for white administrators to come to terms with their alleged white fragility.
The more we pressed Superintendent Jones on this issue, the more she gaslit parents and denied that she promoted CRT in Greenwich.
Of course, in the same school year that administrators were required to read White Fragility, students in at least one Greenwich middle school were assigned to read the Peggy McIntosh article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” and then took a white privilege survey so the students could identify their own biases.
Perhaps that means at least some of the educators incorporated learnings from their white fragility training into the classroom?
