This is something I often hear said at work. Certain people claim that what they perceive a situation to be is the reality of things.

It’s absolute nonsense, of course. Perception may alter our interpretation of reality, but reality itself is whatever it is in that time and place.

That said, perception can affect reality.

During a Civil Rights protest in Birmingham, Alabama, a photographer snapped an iconic image of a German shepherd lunging — wide-mouthed and ready to sink its teeth — at a black teenager.

Although the image did not win a Pulitzer, its impact reverberates today.

The following morning, it was printed in newspapers around the world.

A white police officer sending a dog on a black teen protester was too powerful to ignore; it struck people deep down. And it became the tipping point in the movement.

The following year, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.

However, perception was not reality.

The police officer did not release the dog — in fact, he was trying to pull him back. As I understand the story, most officers in the K9 unit ended up there because they weren’t hard-lined with the rest of the department. In all likelihood, the officer had little racial prejudice whatsoever.

The victim, the young black protester named Walter Gadsden, was merely a bystander. He came from a conservative family with no political interest in the movement. He was there because he “wanted to come and find out what it was all about.”

Nothing that happened in that moment is excusable. But the story in the photograph, the one where a racist police officer sends an attack dog on a young protester, is false.

The world’s reaction was based on their collective perception, not the reality.

However, that perception rippled through the fabric of society. Because of that perception, actions happened, laws changed, and the paradigm shifted.

Perception is not reality.

But it has the power to change it.