It’s an interesting rhetorical question that speaks volumes about the importance of critical self-analysis.

“Can the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch? Why do you see the mote in your brother’s eye but do not see the beam in your own eye.”

A “mote” is small and a “beam” is large.

Jesus delivered those words at the outset of his ministry and ever since then they have served as a constant reminder of the need for people, countries and institutions, which often see themselves up as prosecutors, judges and jailors to be objective. For far too often, we rush to judgment about others without examining our own conduct.

The U.S. State Department should take heed.

Every year around this time, Washington issues an assessment of human rights conditions around the world, usually making some harsh judgments, without giving a nation or people a chance to reply.

This year isn’t any different.

Complying with a U.S. law, which mandates that members of Congress be told about the state of human rights in every United Nations member-state, the U.S. State Department asks its diplomatic missions to report on such things as respect for the integrity of the person, including freedom from arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life; the quality of justice and the way the court systems function; treatment of women; freedom of the press and people’s ability to practice their religion without any hindrance; the rule of law; the state of parliamentary democracy; respect for political rights; discrimination based on race, sex, disability, language or social status; and workers’ rights.

The standard tools used by the State Department to measure the quality of human rights are international conventions and United States laws.

The trouble isn’t so much in the tools but in the people and the institution reaching conclusions about various nations.

To begin with the United States studiously avoids writing about itself and that gap leaves us without information to compare U.S. performance with that of other countries and against the provisions of its own laws.

Amnesty International, the worldwide organization with a long history of studying human rights conditions fills in many of the blank spaces in its annual report. In that publication we find evidence that the United States is a chronic and serious abuser of many of the rights it complains about in other countries.

Take the case of police brutality. Washington has accused cops in most countries of the Caribbean of abusing their power. Bu the excessive use of force is a major problem in a vast majority of the nation’s large cities.

Prison conditions in many countries and state facilities are not only substandard but they are dangerous. And the high rate of people killed or seriously injured in U.S. prisons every year attest to the dangers that lurk in and out of every cell or dormitory.

Just the other day, the U.S. Justice Department gave us the depressing news that 12 percent of African-American men ages 20 to 34 were in jail or prison. It was the highest rate of incarceration of young men ever measured, according to Allen Beck, the chief prison demographer for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an arm of the Justice Department.

On the other hand, less than two percent of white men in the same age group were behind bars.

The comparisons support the view that the scales of justice in the United States are not balanced and that Blacks are getting the short end of the stick.

The Untied States now has a record number of people behind bars, some 2,019,234 to be exact. Both the total number of inmates and the disparity between white and Black inmates are clear indications that something is terribly wrong and needs to be addressed.

Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University said that the statistics highlight “the differences in punitiveness.”

In other words, states differ in their method of punishing people and inevitably in who is punished.

But the State Department doesn’t deal with the problems or the “mote” in its own eye but feels comfortable in drawing attention to the “beam” in other people’s eyes.

A better system would be for the United Nations to undertake the task. It would provide us with a more objective and balanced view of the world.