Washington Gadfly

Ta-Nehisi Coates Gooses His Home Value With Racial Pity Party

Evan Gahr Investigative Journalist
Font Size:

White guilt dominatrix Ta-Nehisi Coates earlier this month gave his subs the painful news that he would not move into his new Brooklyn brownstone because the New York Post published its location.

Coates’ complained in the Atlantic that, “You can’t really be a black writer in this country, take certain positions and not think about your personal safety.”

He can now cry all the way to the bank. Coates just listed his prospective home for $2.395 million — nearly $300,000 more than he paid in April, the Post reported Tuesday. All the attention Coates got from his tale of woe — like an entire story in the New York Times — gave his new abode additional cache.

Home prices generally do not skyrocket by hundreds of thousands of dollars in just one month, a local real estate agent told the Washington Gadfly.

“That’s unusual,” she explained.

It is also unusual for black writers — including many far better known than Coates — to  act like they are sitting ducks for racists. Ralph Ellison, arguably the most famous black writer in American history, did not mind that people knew where he lived in Harlem.

Alice Walker, way better known than Coates, speaks at conferences without any entourage or body guards. “The Color Purple” author did not even seem concerned when a large white man at an NYU panel discussion she headlined sauntered up to her, waved a camera phone in her face and demanded to know if she thought Hamas was a terrorist organization.

Walker, who extensively engaged the pesky fellow before finally walking away, unlike Coates is a novelist.

She sells books, not houses.