The Ways ‘Authenticity’ on the Job Often Turns Into a Snare for People of Color
Within the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, writer Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: everyday directives to “bring your true self” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are far from well-meaning invitations for personal expression – they often become snares. Burey’s debut book – a combination of personal stories, research, cultural commentary and conversations – aims to reveal how businesses take over individual identity, moving the burden of institutional change on to employees who are often marginalized.
Career Path and Wider Environment
The driving force for the book originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: various roles across business retail, emerging businesses and in worldwide progress, interpreted via her background as a disabled Black female. The two-fold position that Burey experiences – a back-and-forth between standing up for oneself and seeking protection – is the engine of her work.
It arrives at a moment of general weariness with organizational empty phrases across America and other regions, as backlash to diversity and inclusion efforts increase, and many organizations are reducing the very systems that previously offered transformation and improvement. Burey enters that terrain to argue that backing away from authenticity rhetoric – specifically, the organizational speech that minimizes personal identity as a collection of surface traits, peculiarities and hobbies, forcing workers concerned with handling how they are seen rather than how they are handled – is not an effective response; rather, we should redefine it on our individual conditions.
Minority Staff and the Act of Persona
Through colorful examples and discussions, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, employees with disabilities – quickly realize to calibrate which self will “fit in”. A vulnerability becomes a drawback and people try too hard by working to appear agreeable. The practice of “showing your complete identity” becomes a projection screen on which various types of expectations are cast: emotional labor, sharing personal information and constant performance of gratitude. In Burey’s words, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but without the protections or the trust to withstand what arises.
According to the author, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but lacking the protections or the trust to endure what arises.’
Real-Life Example: An Employee’s Journey
She illustrates this dynamic through the narrative of an employee, a employee with hearing loss who chose to teach his team members about deaf community norms and interaction standards. His willingness to discuss his background – an act of openness the workplace often commends as “sincerity” – temporarily made everyday communications easier. However, Burey points out, that improvement was fragile. When staff turnover erased the unofficial understanding he had established, the culture of access dissolved with it. “All the information left with them,” he notes wearily. What remained was the weariness of being forced to restart, of being made responsible for an institution’s learning curve. According to Burey, this illustrates to be requested to expose oneself without protection: to endanger oneself in a structure that celebrates your transparency but fails to formalize it into regulation. Sincerity becomes a snare when companies depend on employee revelation rather than institutional answerability.
Author’s Approach and Notion of Opposition
Burey’s writing is simultaneously lucid and poetic. She marries academic thoroughness with a tone of solidarity: an invitation for followers to lean in, to question, to oppose. According to the author, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but principled refusal – the act of opposing uniformity in workplaces that expect thankfulness for simple belonging. To dissent, in her framing, is to challenge the stories companies narrate about fairness and acceptance, and to refuse involvement in customs that perpetuate unfairness. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a meeting, withdrawing of unpaid “diversity” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of oneself is made available to the company. Dissent, she suggests, is an declaration of individual worth in spaces that frequently praise compliance. It represents a practice of honesty rather than opposition, a method of asserting that a person’s dignity is not conditional on organizational acceptance.
Reclaiming Authenticity
Burey also rejects inflexible opposites. Authentic does not simply discard “authenticity” entirely: rather, she advocates for its restoration. According to the author, genuineness is far from the raw display of personality that corporate culture frequently praises, but a more thoughtful harmony between personal beliefs and individual deeds – a honesty that resists alteration by organizational requirements. As opposed to viewing authenticity as a requirement to reveal too much or conform to sterilized models of openness, Burey urges readers to maintain the aspects of it based on honesty, self-awareness and moral understanding. From her perspective, the goal is not to give up on genuineness but to relocate it – to move it out of the executive theatrical customs and toward interactions and organizations where confidence, equity and accountability make {
