The Ways the Concept of Authenticity in the Workplace Can Become a Snare for People of Color
Within the beginning sections of the book Authentic, author Jodi-Ann Burey issues a provocation: typical directives to “be yourself” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are not benevolent calls for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a mix of personal stories, studies, cultural commentary and conversations – attempts to expose how businesses appropriate personal identity, transferring the burden of institutional change on to staff members who are already vulnerable.
Personal Journey and Wider Environment
The impetus for the book stems partly in the author’s professional path: different positions across retail corporations, startups and in worldwide progress, interpreted via her background as a woman of color with a disability. The two-fold position that Burey faces – a push and pull between expressing one’s identity and aiming for security – is the core of her work.
It arrives at a period of collective fatigue with corporate clichés across the United States and internationally, as opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs grow, and many organizations are cutting back the very systems that earlier assured change and reform. The author steps into that terrain to contend that withdrawing from authenticity rhetoric – specifically, the organizational speech that minimizes personal identity as a grouping of surface traits, quirks and pastimes, keeping workers preoccupied with handling how they are perceived rather than how they are treated – is not a solution; we must instead reinterpret it on our individual conditions.
Marginalized Workers and the Act of Self
By means of detailed stories and interviews, Burey illustrates how underrepresented staff – employees from diverse backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, people with disabilities – learn early on to calibrate which persona will “be acceptable”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people try too hard by striving to seem agreeable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a reflective surface on which various types of anticipations are placed: affective duties, disclosure and constant performance of gratitude. According to Burey, workers are told to share our identities – but absent the safeguards or the reliance to endure what emerges.
‘In Burey’s words, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but without the defenses or the trust to survive what comes out.’
Real-Life Example: An Employee’s Journey
The author shows this phenomenon through the account of a worker, a employee with hearing loss who took it upon himself to inform his team members about deaf culture and interaction standards. His willingness to discuss his background – an act of candor the office often commends as “genuineness” – temporarily made everyday communications more manageable. But as Burey shows, that progress was precarious. Once personnel shifts wiped out the casual awareness the employee had developed, the culture of access dissolved with it. “Everything he taught left with them,” he comments exhaustedly. What remained was the fatigue of being forced to restart, of being made responsible for an company’s developmental journey. From the author’s perspective, this is what it means to be asked to expose oneself absent defenses: to endanger oneself in a system that praises your honesty but refuses to codify it into regulation. Authenticity becomes a pitfall when institutions depend on individual self-disclosure rather than institutional answerability.
Author’s Approach and Idea of Resistance
Burey’s writing is both understandable and lyrical. She combines academic thoroughness with a tone of connection: an offer for readers to engage, to interrogate, to disagree. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but ethical rejection – the practice of resisting conformity in environments that require appreciation for basic acceptance. To dissent, from her perspective, is to challenge the stories institutions tell about justice and belonging, and to reject engagement in rituals that perpetuate injustice. It might look like identifying prejudice in a gathering, choosing not to participate of unpaid “equity” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s personal life is offered to the institution. Opposition, Burey indicates, is an affirmation of self-respect in settings that often praise conformity. It constitutes a habit of principle rather than opposition, a approach of insisting that an individual’s worth is not conditional on corporate endorsement.
Restoring Sincerity
The author also avoids inflexible opposites. The book does not merely eliminate “authenticity” entirely: instead, she calls for its restoration. For Burey, authenticity is not the unrestricted expression of individuality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more thoughtful harmony between individual principles and personal behaviors – a principle that opposes manipulation by organizational requirements. Instead of viewing authenticity as a mandate to overshare or adapt to sterilized models of transparency, Burey urges readers to preserve the aspects of it grounded in truth-telling, personal insight and ethical clarity. From her perspective, the goal is not to give up on sincerity but to relocate it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and into connections and workplaces where reliance, equity and responsibility make {
