"P.G." is not PC -
"P.G." is not PC - "P.G," Prince Georges County, Maryland, a rich, black-majority Washington, D.C., suburb, is both the subject and the title of a new novel by Connie Briscoe. "Touted," exclaims the Washington Post, "as an African-American 'Peyton Place,'" P.G. County tells the story of the richest African-American county in the country.
Briscoe's P.G. County is an alternate universe in which one character refers to Atlanta's Morehouse as an Ivy League college -- a misnomer that makes perfect sense in a world in which the elite for generations have been proud products of historically black colleges. But it is also depicted as a county with a chip on its shoulder. "I sense an inferiority complex there," Briscoe says.
That inferiority complex has been on display.
The book's title, for starters, will no doubt produce a great deal of teeth-gnashing and eye-rolls. Years ago, Prince George's County Executive Wayne Curry's administration successfully crusaded to make The Washington Post avoid the practice of abbreviating the county's name in headlines. Many residents, the administration argued, saw it as a sign of derision, disrespect.
Briscoe doesn't see it as an affront. Although she grew up in this area always referring to the county as "P.G.," she is sensitive to the issue and unsuccessfully tried to persuade her publishers to lengthen the title. She says they wanted to keep it P.G. County because it was snappier, easier to remember.
Briscoe deals with the abbreviation issue in the book by having all of the county residents say "Prince George's." Those characters living outside the county, particularly the snarky old money "Gold Coast" Washington families from upper 16th Street, snidely say "P.G." The characters generally stick to that rule, but "even they may slip up sometimes," she says.
No one seems to have complained, so far, that one of the main characters is "the black-sheep daughter" of one of the old money black families there. Nevertheless, watch your mouth when you're tempted to say "P.G." County ("D.C." still seems to be O.K.); otherwise, you might be branded as the sort of person who calls San Francisco "'Frisco."