Literary body defends award for father of Ta-Nehisi Coates after accusations of republishing antisemitic work

The National Book Foundation is defending its decision to honor publisher W. Paul Coates, father of the influential journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, with its Literarian lifetime achievement award, despite his press having published a work that’s been accused of being antisemitic.

In September, Jewish Insider reported that Coates’s Black Classic Press, was continuing to publish The Jewish Onslaught, a 1993 work from then-Wellesly College Africana Studies Tony Martin.

The book describes the backlash Martin, who died in 2013, faced for teaching a discredited Nation of Islam book about the history of Jews involved in the slave trade. It also claims Jewish people joined the Civil Rights Movement to win acceptance from white elites as part of a larger “Jewish onslaught against Black progress.”

At the time of its publication, the book was heavily criticized by civil rights groups like the Anti-Defamation League and repudiated by the leadership of Wellesley College.

Ahead of the National Book Awards on Wednesday, the National Book Foundation defended its choice of Coates, who the foundation has described as “instrumental in preserving the legacy of remarkable writers and elevating works that have shaped our personal and collective understanding of the Black experience within the borders of the United States and around the globe.”

“The National Book Foundation condemns antisemitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and hatred in all its forms,” National Book Foundation executive director Ruth Dickey told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Monday in a statement. “The National Book Foundation also supports freedom of expression and the right of any publisher to make its own determination on what it chooses to publish. Anyone examining the work of any publisher, over the course of almost five decades, will find individual works or opinions with which they disagree or find offensive.” 

The Independent has contacted Black Classic Press for comment.

The Jewish Onslaught no longer appears on the publisher’s site.

Black Classic Press, founded in 1978, is “dedicated to publishing obscure and significant works by and about people of African descent,” according to its website.

It has published lesser-known artistic and scholarly works, as well as re-issued books by well-known thinkers including Amiri Baraka and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, the publisher’s son, is a leading contemporary journalist and essayist, whose works including “The Case for Reparations” and Between the World and Me frequently concern race in America.

Coates’s new book, The Message, is in part about the Israel-Palestine conflict. It compares the inequalities and segregation between Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank to racial segregation between white and Black people in the U.S. during the Jim Crow era.