Of course not. The chart on the left is not black. He is a gray mid-range, and is therefore one on the right. The chart in the middle is not white. It is darker than the other two. 
What if I told you that the color chart on the left is black acrylic paint, the sample on the right is a black shirt jet, and the middle swatch is a newspaper White? The x factor is sunlight and shade and the pesky stuff that our visual systems are playing on us.
samples have all been lifted straight out of a single photo taken in my sunny front yard yesterday morning. I was sitting in front of a cardboard refrigerator painted black. Even when the tones are adjacent (between 2 and 3), our minds tell us that "white" is lighter. It is good to keep this in mind when painting.
The visual cortex uses contextual clues to replace retinas luminance information. Professor Edward Adelson of MIT developed the "checkershadow illusion" to show that the white square (B) in the shadow is equal to the black square (A) to light (click to enlarge). This is a rule to remember: in the sunlight, a newspaper in the shade is darker than a black shirt with light
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For more on the illusion of checkershadow, visit the website of Dr. Adelson and this interactive demo
more about GJ about the painted backdrop, link
Thanks to Professor Adelson
Tomorrow: Spokewheeling
