I was really moved by an episode of This American Life (#214), where they told the story of David Paladino. His mom had a tryst with a black man in high school, and David was the unexpected result. But it wasn't a good story for mom, because she was a white cheerleader dating the white class president. Race relations were iffy at the time and place. So when her white boyfriend just assumed that the pending baby was his, it became so much more convenient for her, that she went along with it, and they married.
The baby comes out a little whitish - didn't look black - and so she was relieved, and continued to go with the story she wanted. Kid's a little dark but hey, it's possible that the family from Sicily were dark-skinned Italians. So the mom and the dad had an incredibly strong belief that this is their son together, and it goes on.
Now as the boy grows up, his racial traits come out more and more, and he's very obviously an interracial child. After days in the summer sun, this is a black kid. And everyone around them believes David is black. Almost every day there's somebody treating him as if he's black. It gets totally weird. In high school, college, it becomes annoying to him, so he starts stating his Italian heritage right up front to anyone who'll listen. Wearing shirts that say "Another Italian masterpiece", and such.
It takes him until age 27, when he has a confrontation with a homeless guy and his girlfriend, to blurt out almost by accident that he's not absolutely positive whether he has some color in him. And even then, with this weird uncomfortable notion now popping up in his head, it takes him 2 years to confront his mom. And his mom, finally, gives him the truth.
So here is a case where the evidence is everywhere. In the mirror! In every person he relates to, who asks him almost immediately about his race. In pale mom and dad and his two pale sisters. But David and his entire family find it so uncomfortable to unravel their adopted reality that they actually work really hard to maintain their belief, reinforcing it all along. To do otherwise would endanger the family structure, and they desperately don't want that to happen.
Do you have beliefs like this in your head? How would you ever know? Do you react with
anger to the very idea that you might contain some fundamental falsehoods? Maybe I overstated the idea that these beliefs could be "dangerous", because they are, after all, what we want, what we depend on, and no actual harm going through life believing you're Italian.