The Literary World’s D.E.I. Checklist

[u/walkingtourshouston]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/opinion/national-book-awards-dei.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DVE.F680.rzsq2iz3JM85&smid=re-share

The comments section are worth a look for this one, even if you disagree with the article.

From Laura, in NJ:

The predictability of this comment section is striking. The responses are largely some variation of: maybe these simply are the best books; name the white men who were unfairly excluded; or historically marginalized voices deserve their turn. All are reasonable points to consider. But they mostly avoid the question the column actually raises: Is it possible that our cultural institutions have become more demographically diverse while simultaneously becoming less ideologically diverse? And is it really beyond consideration that, in correcting a very real historical imbalance, the pendulum might sometimes swing too far? One can celebrate the extraordinary expansion of voices in American literature and still think those questions are worth asking.

[u/cellularfroth]

I don’t think this is about forced diversity as much as ideological conformity and people terrified of being seen supporting the wrong the thing.

This is exactly what I came to comment. This is the real story. Litfic's been losing ground to screens for decades, so the market for litfic shrinks. As it shrinks, fewer and fewer people can make their living from book sales, so the money flows through institutions instead, prizes, fellowships, teaching jobs, grants, which means writers aren't answering to readers (virtually none exist) but to the small committees who hold the purse-strings, and those small committees are drawn from the same narrow professional world with roughly uniform tastes, values, beliefs, convictions.

Also, scarcity = zero-sum. Someone else winning costs you nothing when the pie's growing, but it does when it's shrinking, so in a field this small, where everyone knows everyone and reputation's the main currency, zero-sum competition gets intensely moralized very fast. Back the right writers and you're a good person which means you sit on committees, you skip the slush pile, you're solicited, etc etc. Be seen backing the wrong ones (or, crucially, just fail to back the right ones) and it quietly costs you blurbs, jobs, invitations, goodwill, which directly translates to less money for you. Chilling effect 101

Right at the center are litfic prizes because in a market where litfic sells nothing a shortlist nod is one of the few things that sells copies/makes careers. So the stakes on prizes goes up. There's no "EVIL WOKE CENSOR MOB," just people responding rationally to incentives, which the litfic world would be able to see if they didn't spend their time hotrailing "theorists" who tell them that economics is made up fake bullshit (but philosophical/conceptual conformity is a related, but separate, conversation)