The Power of Mirrors and Windows

Someone asked me a question recently that I haven’t been able to put down.

“Jeff, doesn’t your work put a lot of pressure on institutions? What about personal responsibility?”

I smiled. I get this question often.

And I gave the answer I always give.

I believe in both.

But here’s the thing. You can’t hold someone accountable to a standard they were never given access to.

Personal responsibility and systemic investment aren’t opposites. They are partners. And right now, one of those two is doing way more of the work than the other.

Let me say it again so it lands.

You cannot hold someone accountable to a standard they were never given access to.

This is the quiet truth at the center of so much of the work I do.

We love to talk about grit. We love to talk about hustle. We love to celebrate the kid who made it out. But we don’t talk enough about the conditions that made the climbing possible. The teacher who saw something. The mentor who stayed in the room. The college counselor who actually knew the application timeline. The internship that paid enough to live on. The mirror that said you belong here. The window that said you could go anywhere.

There is a framework I often lean on, originally from Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, who wrote about books as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Mirrors let you see yourself. Windows let you see what is possible. Sliding glass doors let you walk through.

I think about that framework all the time. Not just for books. For life.

A mirror is the Black principal who saw himself in you when you were eleven (Dr. Francis Starks at Nob Hill) . A mirror is the cousin from a similar block who made it to college and came home to tell you how (My cousin Kevin Knight) . A mirror is the first time you saw a senior leader at work who looked like you and realized that title was not a costume reserved for someone else (Karen Grooms, Robert Crumpton, and Duane Spears at Navistar when I was an 18-year-old intern). A mirror tells you that you exist here. You belong here. You are not crazy for thinking you can do this.

A window is the field trip downtown. The summer program at the museum. The first job in a corporate office where you got to watch how meetings actually worked. A window is the fellowship that puts you in a room with founders you only ever read about. A window is a podcast that opens your imagination. A window tells you, this exists. This is possible. Someone built this. You can build something too.

When a young person has both, they have everything. They have a self to come from and a future to walk into. They have an identity and a direction.

When they have neither, no amount of personal responsibility will fill that gap.

So when someone asks me about personal responsibility, I never argue against it. Of course, young people have to show up. Of course, they have to do the work. The young people I meet are doing the work. They are showing up early and staying late. They are translating for their parents and parenting their siblings and still pulling 3.8 GPAs. The discipline is there.

What’s missing is access. Access to the standard. Access to the room. Access to the rules that nobody ever wrote down. Access to the mirror, and access to the window.

Personal responsibility is a force multiplier. It is not a substitute for opportunity. You don’t get to skip the building of the bridge and then blame people for not crossing it.

Someone else asked me recently, how do you not burn out doing this work?

The answer is the young people. They keep you honest.

Every single scholar I meet reminds me why it matters. You don’t burn out when you stay close to the people you are doing it for. You burn out when you get too far away from them, and it starts feeling like strategy instead of people.

That has been the discipline of this season for me. Stay close. Listen more than you talk. Let the work shape you back. Because the moment you stop seeing the faces, you stop doing the work. You start defending the work. You start performing the work. And the young people can feel the difference.

So here is where I land.

Access first. Standards next. Accountability after.

Mirrors so they can see themselves. Windows so they can see what is possible. Doors so they can walk through and bring someone else with them.

We don’t get to skip steps and call it merit. We don’t get to lock the door and call it personal responsibility. We don’t get to look away from the conditions and call it character.

We get to build it. Together. On purpose. With the young people, not just for them.

That is the work.

That has always been the work.