Beyond Blame - Hardcover

Armstrong Williams is the CEO of the Graham-Williams Group.

Through his listener participation radio talk program, African American host Williams meets a listener called Brad, described as a young street hustler, drug dealer, murderer, and womanizer who comes from a two-parent middle-class home (shades of Nathan McCall). Williams uses this meeting with Brad as a catalyst for expressing his opinion on a wide variety of reasons why young African American males become the failures Brad represents. He criticizes the school system from which he states "you got an attitude adjustment rather than an education through programs that fostered a false sense of self-esteem" ; makes broad generalizations about the failure of African American elders, particularly the females for being overprotective; compares to a scale out of balance the detrimental effect of social programs allegedly designed for good, but being proved harmful by fostering dependency on a system of handouts; and scoffs at youth who wear the Malcolm X symbol with no knowledge of who the man really was. In a final coup de gra{ƒ}ce, Williams puts the burden for the misguided life of many African American youth on the "shoulders of the leaders of the nations" who send the double message of what should be and then what little we expect of you because of who you are! Polemics as entertainment. Henrietta Smith