National Book Awards branded DEI checklist by NY Times columnist for streak of minority winners: Bald politicization

The National Book Awards has appeared to overwhelmingly favor books by minority authors or about minority subjects over the last decade — prompting a New York Times columnist to brand the hallowed accolade a “DEI checklist.”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.In the non-fiction category, all 10 of the awards during that same period went to minority authors.Those overwhelming recipients prompted New York Times columnist Bret Stephens to brand the awards a “DEI checklist” Tuesday, and to question whether the National Book Foundation was really interested in selection America’s best books or just pandering to “bald politicization.”“The National Book Awards are no longer national in any meaningful sense,” Stephens wrote.“At best, they represent the recondite tastes of that fraction of the country.”And the supposed favoritism didn’t just apply to the winners — the 2026 awards’ 10 finalists followed a similar template, with nine out of 10 coming from minority authors and subjects ranging from race to sexual orientation.Only one book was from a Jewish, white and straight male, which Stephens argued “in a sane world, should have no bearing on whether his book deserves to make the longlist.”Non-fiction finalists were similar.

They included a book about “an experiment in queer parenthood,” another about “the rise of Islamophobia in America,” while a third was “an argument against white paint,” according to the National Book Foundation’s longlist.The National Book Award has been handed out since 1950 and is considered to be among America’s most prestigious literary award.The likes of Philip Roth, William Faulkner, Joan Didion and Flannery O’Connor have all been recipients in a whose-who of contemporary literature’s greats.But the vast majority of its winners were white males until recent decades, ...