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I think the operational definition of “true colours” should first be established. Definitions such as “who they are” are unhelpful and vague. I define true colours as, when someone is in a situation that evokes primitive emotion strong enough to supersede innate socialization, how do they behave?
It’s in these situations that people behave widely different. Some people break down and cry, some run away, some get extremely violent, some attempt to commit suicide, some become hysterical etc. Its important to know how people show their “true colours” in these situations in order to ensure your own safety. 
For example, my brother starts getting extremely angry in situations such as these, and it leads to sometimes violent outbursts. This behaviour is predictable, as it happens every time a situation of extreme stress or emotion arises. It is the predictability of this violent behaviour, even though 99.9% of the time he doesn’t behave anything like this, that are his true colours. And they are indeed useful to know to be prepared when situations such as these arise.
Let's assume everyone behaves 99% of the time, and 1% of the time we act poorly. 
Do we just accept everything that happens in the 1% as equal? Obviously not
I'd rather be around people that might say something mean in their 1%, rather than people who might punch me in their 1%. 
It might not be who they are 99% of the time, but knowing theres a 1% chance they might get violent is enough to want to avoid them. 
Those are their true colours, because other people when pushed still won't resort to getting physical. 
I'm wondering what you did in your moment of irrational anger that got you tarred with a label you don't like? 
Bottom line is, nobody is a twat 24/7. But if we only judged people on their best moments we'd have empty prisons >


because other people when pushed still won't resort to getting physical

To be fair, I think that virtually everyone would resort to getting physical at some point. That point will be different from person to person, but there is always a line. >

I don't think this is really a good or useful simplification though. Yeah everyone has a line, but there's also a huge difference between say beating your partner for insulting your cooking and fighting a stranger because they're threatening your life
Even if everyone has a line, there are still benchmarks most of us will find acceptable or unacceptable >

There's a key distinction between someone being judged for losing their cool, and being judged for specific things they say and do while they lost their cool.
If someone is happy and cheerful 99% of the time and then 1% of the time they just lose it and scream, it would be ridiculous to say "aha! you're _really_ a screamer, you're not actually happy and cheerful, your true colors is a screamer". Their true colors is someone who is happy 99% of the time. But everyone understands that. 
When people talk about "showing their true colors", what they are usually talking about is someone who is normally happy and cheerful, and then loses their cool (as we all do), and then, while they have lost they cool, they suddenly start calling black people n-word. What was revealed there is not that they sometimes lose their cool (as we all do), it's that when they lose their cool, and are thus speaking without their normal filters present, they are suddenly incredibly racist.
Plenty of people get mad and yell and scream and say hurtful things they regret later without those things including racism, misogyny, etc. >

> We’ve all been angry because of whatever reason, and have said/done things that we regret, and probably wouldn’t repeat
But part of 'true colours' is to understand why you did what you did. If you said a shitty, racist thing, why did you reach for that as your first insult or defensive mechanism? If you resorted to violence because you were under pressure and frustrated, what made you do that?
Maybe you were raised in a household where people used violence shows, like slamming things on tables, getting in people's faces, or saying cruel things was a way to show anger. Maybe you live in a culture where racism is acceptable and calling someone 'jewy to the bone' to imply they're stingy is normal. 
Even if you don't normally do those things, you still did it. You felt, in that moment, justified in doing it. 
Nobody ever says your colours can't change. People can learn to be not racist. They can learn not to say racist or homophobic things as insults. 
But somewhere inside, just for a moment, you felt like you could do the bad thing. And you didn't clock it and go, "oh, shit, no, I shouldn't". In these circumstances, it's someone saying it with their whole chest. 
>  I think society wrong, and is ignoring the 99% of times where you were not acting out.
Nobody is 100% good or bad. Good people do shitty things, shitty people do good things. What matters is what society sees you doing in public. 
If you are having a classic Karen meltdown in public because you don't want to wait in line at the store and you're tearing the manager a new asshole because you think you've been personally wronged over it, it doesn't matter if you donate to charity and volunteer in a soup kitchen. What mattered was your actions over someone who was less powerful than you, when you had a choice to make and you picked the wrong one. 
People are allowed to judge you for that. >

I will add that some people don’t have the luxury of losing control. A cop may have that luxury, but the minority they pull over without cause cannot, because it could get them killed. >

Unfortunately, some actions can't be taken as a moment of maddness, and such action has to be attributed to some bottled up emotion that came to the surface but was always there and hence why some have the association with it being "true colours"
It may be smacking a partner or as severe as rape or murder >

Those are very extreme examples, which go beyond someone’s true colors >

You are the sum of all of your parts.
Being extremely angry does not suddenly change the person you are, only more likely to act on impulse. And if your impulse is to be violent, racist, what have you, then that's a part of you within you that you need to contend with. There's no ghost in the shell, no secret pilot that only shows up when you're angry. It's you. >

They say that a quarrel loosens your tongue better than a few shots of alcohol.
If in a heated moment your first instinct is to exploit someone's vulnerability to "hit them where it hurts", then, well, how is it not fair to assume those are your honest thoughts and you're just not voicing them be abuse you're polite? >

As someone who suffers with bipolar disorder, I agree with this when medicated and on a proper routine my "true colors" are shown but when I wasent medicated I wa so far detached from reality and prone to violent outburst people thought I was an emotionless monster and treated me as such >

When you act irrationally out of anger it's part of who you are. Not your true colors, or all of you. But it is important to not be a massive dick when you're angry. Luckily I haven't needed to work on this too much and it's always come pretty naturally. But I've met plenty of people who fucking lose it when they get angry and it's not acceptable behavior. And that is part of who they are.
You need to get angry at appropriate times, and act appropriately. >

I don't really see this point being brought up, but how you react when you're angry is defintely an indication of your character.
You cannot control anger, you can however control what you do with that anger. This is a skill that can be learned. Children throw tantrums and hurt people when they are angry because ethey haven't learned how to deal with anger in a healthy way yet. If you as an adult are still reacting like that then there is a part of your emotional/personal development that you've been seriously neglecting.
If you're okay with reacting like this and even making excuses for it then you absolutely deserve to be judged in my opinion because I don't even view it as being judged it's just the consequence of your actions.
No one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes and controlling your emotions is something that is not humanly possible however controlling your reaction to your emotions is possible. That is what builds character and that is a definitive indication of who you are as a person.
If you cannot be bothered to learn emotional regulation and end up hurting people because of it then that is completely on you and all the things you've neglected in yourself. Yes mental health plays a big role and so does trauma but like the saying goes "none of it was your fault but it is defintely your responsibility".
If you have violent outbursts then that is an indication of your character in my opinion.
That shows people who you are. If your response to an emotion is to try and hurt someone or say and do hurtful things then yes that is who you truly are. You can't just erase that part of you because you're nice to people most of the time. You have control over what you do and say. And if what you do and say hurt others then you are culpable for it, irrespective if it was the heat of the moment. You're responsible for it, you should be held accountable and people are free to make whatever opinions they want on you, because it's based on an action you took that harmed someone else when you could have taken one that would not have harmed someone. That was a choice you made when you decided to react to anger in the way you did. >

Believing something is wrong and believing something is acceptable are different. We know stealing is wrong. We know murder is wrong. People still do it. But they believed it to be an acceptable response to the situation. 
You are conflating acceptable with good and bad. Those conceots are not tied together. 
Anything you did do, was acceptable to you. By definition, as you did it. You accepted the action as appropriate and within your power. You did it. No denying it. The rage, the anger, he slurs, the ill things you did. Those are you, you considered those acceptable and appropriate. 
If you want to change and not make those acceptable, work on yourself, be better, improve, change, and make progress as a human being. It does not mean everyone will accept your claim of change as you work on yourself, but you will know you are making progress.
My core premise here is simple, every person is their evil, darkest itteration of themselves. Just as much as every person is their good, kindest itteration of themselves, always. 
You cant say, but you didnt mean that, because yes, part of you did, part of you did do that, part of you did override all other thoughts and responses that might stop you and let it go. That was you that is you. So, now you gotta work on being better. 
Because that is all we can strive for, to be better than we were before and keep working on it. 
The evil hurts more, the evil exacts a greater price. So if you dont like the evil you, that you always are, work on it. Be better, improve. It does not mean you are unworthy of love or kindness, or that you cannot get better. It just means you want to get better. If you can accept that you are not perfect good, and that evil imperfection is you, you can best work to overcome it. But not all peoples evil is the same depth or as cruel. 
We are all imperfect beings, and we must aim to be better, by recognizing how we are broken and seeing how best we can fix ourselves. Not by breaking and throwing the pieces away and denying them. >

"True colors" is plural, as people are multi-faceted.
Flying off the handle is one of those colors.
So flying off the handle is showing (at least one of) your true colors. >

Im not talking about repeated behavior. Rather, I stated 1% of moments over the 99% of “normal” behavior >

1% is a pretty big percentage of behavior. That's...  3 times a year? People usually use "true colors" to refer to something that seems likely to happen again, even if rarely. Rarely is still repeatedly. >

3 days a year. You show different behavior more than once a day. >

Except it's not that simple.
We as human beings tend to use 'masks' to hide our intentions, our thoughts and our feelings. When we get angry, we say things that we DO mean to say at that time. Because if we didn't mean to say them, we wouldn't.
You, I and everyone else are a product of our actions. Those include things said and done when we are angry, no different than when we are sad or happy.
Regretting something doesn't mean we didn't mean to do it at that moment. It only means we didn't consider the ramifications of those actions and now feel poorly about the result.
So when the 'mask' breaks and people see something occur that you wish hadn't, you can't simply say 'well this was just a one-time thing' or 'This isn't who I am" because it's denying the reality that yes, for that moment, that IS who you were. It IS what you said or what I said.
And while we might regret those statements or actions, the truth of the matter is that we should reflect upon them, seek forgiveness if we feel remorse and do what is necessary to reconcile as best we can. If you truly regret something said in anger, the best course of action is to develop methods and ways in which not to have it recur.
But just because you are 99% a vegan, and you only eat meat 1% of the time... you still aren't 'fully vegan'. Same with being a Straight-A student who got 1 B. It's a part of you whether you like it or not, the only choice we have as individuals is our movement from that point and how we go about changing people's perspective to look at the 99%. >

They're both who you are. It isn't not who you are. >

If it comes out in a moment of strong emotions, it means it was in there to begin with. If it comes out, it means it is something you have been thinking about, or else your mind wouldn't be reaching for it first. Some things are easy for people to understand, maybe because it is relatable, or we somehow know it doesn't represent you. In other cases we view it as a moral failing that you are allowing such thoughts to float about inside your head, perhaps because we don't see how you could have a satisfactory excuse.
There might actually be legitimate reasons people aren't aware of, for example obsessive thoughts, but I don't think you can legitimately say "it just popped out, I swear I never ever think about these things". >

We learn what someone is really made of when they're under stress. When the chips are down, will they still love you? Will they still be faithful? Everyone wants to feel secure and in those heated moments things are often said and done that rock our world, make us feel threatened and unloved, shatter the trust we have in each other. Those moments tell the people around you that you are not truly safe.
Is this concept misguided? Sometimes. Is it abused and used to gaslight people? Frequently. Should we hope that the people who matter will try to work through the fallout of our rage? Yes. Should those people expect better from us? Yes.
Reacting violently is never constructive. Being angry may make you feel powerful but truly it is our moment of greatest weakness. Anger is valuable information to be honored and validated, not a license to justify doing damage. If you give into it selfishly you put your base instincts above your higher judgment.