The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is offering “scholarships” for “members of underserved communities.” I put the word “scholarships” in quotes because they’re really free memberships in the 2024 Nebula conference, not educational grants. (The deadline to apply has gone by, sorry.) This sounds admirable, but some of their ideas of what constitutes a “community” make the scheme very disturbing. The categories are:

• “Black and/or Indigenous creators in the United States and abroad.”
• “Asian creators, Asian American creators, and creators from the Pacific Islands.”
• “creators with backgrounds in Spanish-speaking and/or Latin American cultures.”
• “creators with disabilities.”
• “creators whose financial situations may otherwise prevent them from participating.”
• “creators who live outside the United States.”
• “creators who identify as LGBTQIA+.”

Let’s start with the most reasonable categories and work roughly downward.

Financial limitations are a traditional and worthy reason for providing assistance. No detailed discussion is necessary.

People with disabilities are apt to face extra costs and inconveniences when going to a conference, and they may feel socially awkward about fitting in. Again, helping people in such situations is uncontroversial.

Scholarships for creators living outside the USA make sense because SFWA is trying to expand its identity from being a US-specific organization. It was originally known as Science Fiction Writers of America. Encouraging people from outside a group’s geographic area is a long-standing tradition, especially through fan funds like TAFF and DUFF. This approach helps to recognize that science fiction is international and doesn’t know any borders. Also, the conference is in California, so it’s harder for people from other countries to get there.

International as we’d like to be, languages are boundaries. You can’t read a book or watch a show in a language you don’t know and get much out of it. A category for creators working in any language other than English could be even better. The description uses the word “Latinx,” which condescendingly says “We fixed the sexist Spanish language for you,” but that’s a minor detail.

With the 2023 Hugo scandal and the disqualification of works by Chinese authors for no legitimate reason, a category for Asian creators is appropriate. I hope they remember that Asia is a big continent, including India, most of Russia’s land area, most of what we call the Middle East, and other countries. Turks are as Asian as Japanese — maybe more so, since Japan consists of islands outside mainland Asia. But why are “Asian American creators” part of the category? People of Asian extraction, connected to their ancestral cultures, live all over the world. If SFWA is trying to minimize the “America” in its identity, that restriction doesn’t make sense.

Indigenous creators are a plausible category; recognizing the culture of the people who lived here before the Europeans came has a lot of value. In practice, it could get messy, as there have been ugly disputes over who has a proper indigenous pedigree. I hope the administrators will focus on the writers’ cultural context rather than their ancestry or tribal approval.

I’ve separated that from black creators, although they’re mixed in the same category, because skin color is a very different matter. At this point the categories jump from the mostly reasonable to the unreasonable. The appearance of a creator simply should not matter. The idea that people constitute a “community” because of how they look echoes some very ugly history in America and other countries. Not long ago, racial discrimination was considered unacceptable almost everywhere in the USA. Now it’s come back in a “progressive” guise.

One way to look at it is to consider the complementary categories. Awards for American creators, English-language works, and North American creators wouldn’t be too upsetting. Awards for people with handicaps or lack of funds overcome an undesirable situation. But if you can have scholarships for black creators, the implication is that having a dark skin makes an important difference or is inherently undesirable. It smacks of ghettoization, a practice which some modern publishers promote. it would be equally legitimate to have scholarships that only white people qualify. Racial barriers always work both ways. The right place to stop racially discriminating is not to start.

Likewise, what business does a group awarding a scholarship have asking about your sexual preferences? People who are gay, trans, etc., don’t speak a different language or live in a different part of the world. They could be friends of yours, and you might not know because the question never came up. Asking people to disclose their sexual preference or history in order to qualify for a scholarship is intrusive and unwarranted. A lot of trans people prefer not to have it widely known that they were once a different sex. Reducing the stigma is good, but asking creators to out themselves when applying for a scholarship isn’t the way to do it.

SFWA made some bad choices in its scholarship categories. The important thing about writers and other creators should be what they create, not what they look like or what they do behind closed doors.