{"id":357198,"date":"2026-09-26T00:04:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T00:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/357198\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T00:04:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T00:04:21","slug":"national-book-awards-branded-dei-checklist-by-ny-times-columnist-for-streak-of-minority-winners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/357198\/","title":{"rendered":"National Book Awards branded ‘DEI checklist’ by NY Times columnist for streak of minority winners"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Book Awards has appeared to overwhelmingly favor books<\/a> by minority authors or about minority subjects over the last decade \u2014 prompting a New York Times columnist to brand the hallowed accolade a \u201cDEI checklist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the 10 awards for fiction handed out by the National Book Foundation since 2015, nine were given to minority authors while just one was given to a white author.<\/p>\n

In the non-fiction category, all 10 of the awards during that same period went to minority authors.<\/p>\n

\"SeveralThe National Book Awards were branded a \u201cDEI checklist\u201d by New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. Africa Studio \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Those overwhelming recipients prompted New York Times columnist Bret Stephens<\/a> to brand the awards a \u201cDEI checklist\u201d Tuesday, and to question whether the National Book Foundation was really interested in selection America\u2019s best books or just pandering to \u201cbald politicization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe National Book Awards are no longer national in any meaningful sense,\u201d Stephens wrote. \u201cAt best, they represent the recondite tastes of that fraction of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the supposed favoritism didn\u2019t just apply to the winners \u2014 the 2026 awards\u2019 10 finalists followed a similar template, with nine out of 10 coming from minority authors and subjects ranging from race to sexual orientation.<\/p>\n

Only one book was from a Jewish, white and straight male, which Stephens argued \u201cin a sane world, should have no bearing on whether his book deserves to make the longlist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Non-fiction finalists were similar. They included a book about \u201can experiment in queer parenthood,\u201d another about \u201cthe rise of Islamophobia in America,\u201d while a third was \u201can argument against white paint,\u201d according to the National Book Foundation\u2019s longlist.<\/p>\n

The National Book Award has been handed out<\/a> since 1950 and is considered to be among America\u2019s most prestigious literary award. The likes of Philip Roth, William Faulkner, Joan Didion and Flannery O\u2019Connor have all been recipients in a whose-who of contemporary literature\u2019s greats.<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationThe National Book Foundation has picked mostly minority authors recently. National Book Foundation<\/p>\n

But the vast majority of its winners were white males until recent decades, prompting the criticisms \u2014 the kind dogging various arts awards for years \u2014 that minority voices have been largely neglected.<\/p>\n

And Stephens suggested the National Book Foundation\u2019s focus on minority authors<\/a> and subjects could be a literary \u201cform of reparations\u201d \u2014 but which would only end up perpetuating the original problem.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAs an old friend of mine liked to say, turning the tables isn\u2019t the same thing as achieving justice,\u201d he added. \u201cThe bald politicization of the nation\u2019s highest literary prizes is achieving several forms of injustice at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he argued the practice was \u201cdeforming and hollowing\u201d American literature, leading not only to readers possibly disappearing but also would-be writers giving up before they\u2019ve even started. <\/p>\n

\u201cWriters or scholars whose subjects or views don\u2019t fit the preferences of prize givers will pay a price for their intellectual independence,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOthers, not keen on careers of penury and oblivion, will never become writers or scholars in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to burn books to destroy a culture,\u201d Stephens concluded, quoting \u201cFahrenheit 451\u201d author Ray Bradbury. \u201cJust get people to stop reading them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National Book Awards has appeared to overwhelmingly favor books by minority authors or about minority subjects over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[35100,2878,17446,14292,9,11,10,58],"class_list":["post-357198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-authors","tag-books","tag-dei","tag-diversity","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}