"...have a hard time getting upscale retail to come due to outdated perceptions and devaluing of the prosperity and success of that community."
I've ben hearing this complaint for some time...as if certain retail organizations have a moral obligation to set up shop there. If all this lamenting really has a non-PC basis, why don't some sharp, opportunistic entrepreneurs set up an upscale store or, better yet, an upscale shopping center in PG County and take advantage of this ignored, potential massive wealth-creating opportunity. Prince Georges shouldn't have to look to a Gucci or Neiman-Marcus to validate that it has "arrived"
...and what's with this supposed hurt over the use of "PG" - DC, UVA, GW and the NYPD all seem to handle identification by initials without any petulance...and guilt-ridden libs paying homage to their supposed hurt. Hey , PG, just get over it.
Perhaps people should be a bit less sensitive, but I suspect it comes from personal experience.
Upscale retail has begun to arrive; a lot of increasingly upscale development is taking place. Part of the dynamic in Prince George's is wealth versus modest means versus poverty, with plenty of all but more of the first of late. The libertarian in me suspects that somebody in government was "rent-seeking" or engaging in "negative public-choice" behavior pending a payoff of some sort.
I don't know that people are complaining as economists or as political scientists, or as people who claim to have a legal, contractual claim of convenient upscale retail, but probably as people who don't want to drive all the way to Annapolis or to White Flint to buy professional clothing.
Plus, if your father or grandmother was not allowed to shop at Neiman-Marcus or Hochschild Kohn or Hutzler's or Hecht's due to his/her race/skin color, getting Neiman Marcus to come to your Zip Code or next door may have greater significance. People remember.
Prince George's County is not technically a city, but for many Black Americans it is the City on the Hill. Steele is both an example and a political beneficiary of that reality.
Commenting by HaloScan
