W. Paul Coates, the father of journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, won the prestigious National Book Award despite claims that his company published brazenly anti-Semitic novels.
The literary nonprofit National Book Foundation has since defended its decision to award Coates a lifetime achievement award.
“The National Book Foundation condemns anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and all forms of hatred,” Ruth Dickey, the foundation's executive director, told the Post in a statement.
“The National Book Foundation also supports freedom of expression and the right of publishers to make independent decisions about what they publish.”
The National Book Foundation added that Coates “was instrumental in preserving the legacy of great writers and elevating the work that shaped individual and collective understandings of the Black experience in the United States and around the world.”
The foundation's September announcement announcing Mr. Coates as this year's recipient of the award also confirmed that Mr. Coates' Baltimore-based publisher, Black Classics Press, was republishing “The Attacks of the Jews.” It faced backlash after it was reported by Insider.
The 1993 title was written by Tony Martin, then a tenured professor at Wellesley College, who asked his students to read an excerpt from “The Secret Relationship Between Negroes and Jews'' and caused controversy. brewed.
The book, reportedly published by the Nation of Islam, names Jews for their role in the Atlantic slave trade and the enslavement of Africans in America. Works archived at The Atlantic since 1995 and a book published by the late Harold Blackman, a historian specializing in African-American and Jewish relations.
According to book reviews, Martin wrote “Onslaught of the Jews” to defend himself, in which he claimed that Jews owned more slaves than all white people.
At the time of its publication, Wellesley College and anti-Semitic groups strongly criticized the book and its claims.
Black Classic Books did not respond to requests for comment.
Coates' son, Ta-Nehisi Coates, is a prominent journalist known for his writings on race relations. His latest book, The Message, is a controversial collection of essays with sections on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He made headlines for defending the book in a CBS interview after co-anchor Tony Dokoupil accused him of being an extremist.
