"Believe them"

Assessing the saying.

There’s a saying I’ve seen going around the internet for several years now: “When someone shows you their true colors, believe them.” And I’ve found the advice just as shallow, and potentially hurtful, as it is potentially helpful.

In one sense, of course we have to be wary of an overly positive bias, repeatedly trusting someone who has made very clear they do not regard our health and safety.

But we also have to temper this with the awareness that our perception is limited. We have to bear in mind how easy it is to interpret someone’s “true colors” based on our own biases, and not on what that person actually did (or has control over). After all, have we not all had experiences where we truly acted out of altruism—truly motivated to benefit others even at our own expense—only to have those actions interpreted as the opposite?

We are often so confidently mistaken, and it pains me to know how often people get ostracized for things where a little grace and a little patience could have brought more light.