There was once a city where every crime, every kindness, every movement was recorded, but no names were ever written down. In the Mirror Room at the center of the city, leaders gathered to solve their troubles with only this: pure data. They knew the number of robberies, the times of each assault, the directions of every fleeing footstep. But the Mirror Room never told them who did what. It only reflected what was done.
The people outside grew uneasy. “How can we know who to blame?” they asked. “How can we protect ourselves without labels?” So they began marking each person with titles: thief, officer, addict, prophet, foreigner, brother. At first, it made them feel safe. “Now we know who’s who,” they said.
But soon, they stopped going to the Mirror Room. Instead of asking what happened? they only asked who was it? The Mirror Room gathered dust, and the labels grew heavier. A man who once fed his neighbor in the dark was never praised, because he wore the label gang member. A woman who lied for years was still elected, because she bore the label citizen. The people stopped seeing the truth and only saw each other.
One day, a dancer came to the city. He wore no labels and danced like fire and grief and joy all at once. The people watched, confused. Some said, “He must be one of us.” Others said, “No, he moves like an outsider.” But he just danced.
“What are you trying to say?” someone finally asked.
He paused and pointed to the Mirror Room. “You stopped looking there,” he said. “Now you only look at costumes.” Then he danced again, this time with bullets in his feet and a hymn in his shoulders. “You label the gunman before you count the dead. You praise the uniform before you count the cost.”
A child asked, “Then how do we know what’s good?”
He smiled. “You don’t start with who. You start with what happened. Then you ask why. And only then can you wonder who we are becoming.”
But most people walked away. They preferred the labels. They made decisions faster that way.
Only a few went back to the Mirror Room.
—
Reflections: Identity and Judgment
This parable invites reflection on how identity—once meant to enrich and humanize—can become a shortcut for judgment. The Mirror Room represents objective data: action abstracted from identity. But without narratives, even data can become meaningless. And without awareness of bias, narratives can distort truth.
In many ways, identity becomes a container of inherited assumptions. Police can mean protector or oppressor depending on your lens. Immigrant can mean threat or promise. Even Christian can mean servant or judge. When we collapse people into their labels, we stop asking what they’ve actually done.
Donald Glover’s dancing, especially in This Is America, is a kind of embodied philosophy. He uses rhythm and movement to reflect contradictions—joy in the face of violence, spectacle hiding horror, a smile that distracts from gunfire. He is the Mirror Room and the chaos outside. His dance is an invitation to notice: the form, the mask, the truth hiding in plain sight.
