The Truth Is in the Mirror
But black America largely refuses to look
THE TRUTH IS IN THE MIRROR
But black America largely refuses to look
John Albert Washington
One of the most transformative inventions in human history was the mirror. Not because it changed the world around us, but because it changed how we see ourselves. For the first time, man could look directly at his own image, study it, evaluate it, and confront it. And with that awareness came a choice: to accept what is seen, or to turn away from it and change it, if possible.
The same principle of physical mirrors applies to psychological mirrors when reflecting communities as well as individuals. And here is the uncomfortable truth: a people, like an individual, cannot correct what they refuse to confront. As a center-left black liberal, I say to my fellow black brothers and sisters who continue to cover up our failures and auction all of them out to racism, I say, you are not helping our people—you are harming our people.
I was reminded of this when I attended a local forum titled “State of Systemic Racism” in Fayetteville, NC. I almost stayed home—as my wife, with her usual common sense, suggested, but what I’d seen in my own community and across the country made me curious about such an event in 2025.
We are no longer living under the legal constraints of Jim Crow, and in my experience—especially in the neighborhood we left five years earlier—racism was not the primary force holding us back. The forum didn’t reflect the reality I see today. Shouldn’t the forum have been about issues like our kids’ academic struggles?
My wife and I now live in a wonderful community, but the one we left in 2020 had become considerably rougher over the years. Built in the 1980s as a lower-middle-class neighborhood, about 90 percent Black, with well-kept lawns, it declined over time as renters replaced homeowners. As conditions worsened, homes became difficult to sell, which is why we stayed as long as we did.
Angered by the constant litter, I spent the last five years before we moved picking up trash at the community entrance, with another resident doing the same midweek. The debris never stopped—fast-food wrappers, cans, bottles, cigarette butts, used diapers, shell casings, condoms, even a hypodermic needle. By Monday evening, it was back. On one occasion, someone had defecated along the roadside. I avoided handling the diapers, condoms, and especially the shell casings, which could have been crime evidence.
One Saturday morning, that routine endangered me. As I filled a trash bag, sirens surged down the main road. Then, suddenly, a car came screaming into the neighborhood, nearly flipping and missing me by only a few feet. The first police cars overshot the turn, but I waved the others in the right direction as the driver sped deeper into the neighborhood, knocking over a mailbox. He was still at large by the evening news.
Conditions steadily declined. Break-ins became common, streets grew dirtier, and loose pit bulls forced residents to carry sticks after an elderly woman was mauled. Young people cut through my yard and insulted me when I challenged them. Police presence was routine. One night, there was a drive-by shooting three doors down. Loud music at 2 a.m. was common. I once broke up a fight between two brothers in front of my house. On another occasion, I calmed a pistol-carrying neighbor who was chasing his girlfriend up the street.
One young man, knowing I received VA disability for Army injuries, asked how he could get benefits, assuming I had gamed the system. He was in his twenties, healthy, unemployed, and lived with his sister, who sometimes locked him out after drunken nights. I once took him to apply for a job at a slaughterhouse—he was hired but never went to work.
Among the five houses on my node were four men who had fathered eight children they did not support. One man, whom I count as a neighbor because he was so often present though not a resident, had a child with a neighbor’s daughter and reportedly another elsewhere. He did not work, claiming to live off gambling. Two houses down, the young man who had asked me about receiving benefits had a child with a woman a block away. And in the next adjacent house lived the two brothers I had separated in the fight, one a former drug dealer who boasted of fathering five children whom he did not support. He said he worked nights, which his mother told me was untrue, and that he survived on occasional yard work. His brother had one child and lived on disability due to a mental condition.
What I am describing is not unusual in many black communities. It’s hardly attributable to systemic racism, yet when poor social outcomes are discussed, the self-responsibility factor is often ignored. And the neighborhood I speak of here is not considered to be among the worst of communities in Fayetteville. Over a thousand people live in this community, and most are good people, but flaws in black culture create tribulations that should not exist. These conditions obtain in neighborhoods across America, but there are too many in the black community that refuse to peer into our mirror and get an honest look at some of our behaviors. The reflexive explanation of our issues is through the lens of racism. Racism exists—I have seen it and still do—but it is without the power of the past, even with the revisionism of the current administration.
Bottom of Form
Anyway, I made it to the systemic racism meeting. In the introductory session before a breakdown into discussion groups, there was an overview of the problems of racism as though we were still in the shackles of Jim Crow. For those who have seen the currently running Southern Poverty Law Center commercial on some nights on MS Now, with its “We Shall Overcome “ music and civil rights marchers, that was the essence. It could have been in 1940s America. (It’s worth noting that the Southern Poverty Law Center appears to have been attempting to keep racism alive so it would have an enemy to fight—the non-profit organization was allegedly funding the KKK and neo-Nazi groups to the tune of millions of dollars.)
When the session broke down into discussion groups, I picked the one on education. The discussion leader was part of the county school system and presented us with the shocking county statistics on black school suspension, which were horrific; however, the reason came down to one thing: racist teachers and a racist school system.
My wife is a retired principal and my daughter is a schoolteacher. About 43 percent of the Cumberland County school system teachers are black. So, somehow I couldn’t digest the charge of racism. When I suggested that failure might be owed to the black family in its socialization system, I was instantaneously attacked by the whole group. And when I backed up my point by citing the statistic that only 44.6 percent of black youth are raised in two-parent homes, a howl erupted from the entire room.
I had violated a serious taboo, and it is a subject that you just don’t discuss with some black people. Never, especially when there are whites in the room. The voices got hot, with most of the room raging at me in unison. When one man stood up in a rage, I grabbed my coat and left. My wife had warned me.
It is not just blacks; all groups have a problem with criticism, and realistic reflections in the mirror are hard for all. This is especially true for us blacks, since we’ve undergone hundreds of years of accusations of laziness, character flaws, and biological inferiority to justify slavery and Jim Crow. I get that, and know we blacks have developed a hypersensitivity to criticism that borders on paranoia. I still share a bit of it myself. However, if we intend to evolve, we must become more open to criticism and accept valid points when we are wrong.
We are not lacking internal mirrors—we are resisting them. To know oneself requires honest introspection and the discipline to return to that mirror again and again. I have had to understand this in my personal life when I took wrong turns, and it was hard working through my problems. One mirror image of myself so disgusted me that I made great changes in my life.
When I look at the condition of many people in many black communities today, I can’t escape the sense that we are, in some ways, avoiding that reflection. We often—and rightly—speak about historical injustices. Those forces were real and consequential. But history, while explanatory, cannot serve as a complete guide for present behavior.
In the mirror, we may never be the fairest of them all. But by confronting our blemishes—plainly and without excuse—we give ourselves the chance to correct them and rejoice in the Promised Land.
John Albert Washington is an octogenarian who has earned his daily bread, first, as an Army paratrooper and then, later in civilian life, as a computer support technician, two careers from which he has now achieved a double retirement. In and around these occupations, he fed his family with janitorial work, factory labor, and long-haul trucking, while also managing the completion of 2 years of college during the journey. Though he is not academically credentialed, he feels his short school life expanded his ability to think broadly and enhanced his analytical thinking skills. As a center-left liberal, he holds firmly that values like family commitment, self-sufficiency, and personal responsibility are not merely conservative but also deeply liberal ideals. He has published in Quillette and has two previous articles in the Journal of Free Black Thought: “Black Culture and the Euro-American Collective Brain,” “Blaming Racism Won’t Cut It,” “The Unraveling of the Black Family,” “The Brother War,” “‘Uplift Suasion’ vs. Dysfunctional Black Behavior,” and “Pathways to Manhood: The Military vs. the Gang.” He lives in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Excellent observations. I don't see how anyone can reject them outright. At the very least, these observations should be carefully evaluated by everyone. Unfortunately, the very schools that are intended to do that, do quite the opposite.
I learned, over time, that the plantation owners of the South didn't hate slaves. They regarded slaves similarly to their own children (some slaves WERE their own children!). They had concern and compassion for slaves, but always from the perspective that they were inferior and needed to be regulated, just as children must be. Many slaves bought into this, themselves feeling a need to be supervised by their superiors. Laws have changed. Has that attitude?
Another fine and necessary essay. “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity." This quote is from "The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. DuBois. (I plan to write an essay on this for JFBT in the near future.) This quote captures a critical element of the dynamic you describe. We judge ourselves not by our own standards but by the standards of others. Who we think we are is always a function of what the rest of society thinks of us. If we lag behind other groups then they must think us inferior so— just like an individual—our choices are to believe we are in some way responsible for our shortcomings, or to blame them on others. Accepting responsibility for one's choices leaves one open to the possibility of failure, which risks reinforcing self-doubt and negative external perceptions. For far too many, the safest psychic course of action is to blame others. As you quite correctly note, "we blacks have developed a hypersensitivity to criticism that borders on paranoia." This is the reason why. The tragic irony here is that failing to look in the mirror creates a negative feedback loop of increasing levels of failure, which then necessitates more rationalizations, deflections, and scapegoating—more systemic racism, if you will. Until those of us who have platforms for truth telling--everyone from teachers, to ministers, to journalists—force a conversation about this (no matter who else is listening) this problem with persist and Blacks will fall further and further behind, a betrayal of the heartbreaking sacrifices of those who came before us.