How ‘Authenticity’ in the Workplace Can Become a Trap for Employees of Color
Throughout the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, author Jodi-Ann Burey issues a provocation: everyday directives to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not benevolent calls for self-expression – they often become snares. Her first book – a mix of personal stories, studies, societal analysis and discussions – aims to reveal how businesses co-opt identity, moving the responsibility of institutional change on to employees who are frequently at risk.
Career Path and Wider Environment
The driving force for the work originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: different positions across retail corporations, emerging businesses and in worldwide progress, viewed through her background as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that the author encounters – a push and pull between expressing one’s identity and seeking protection – is the driving force of the book.
It emerges at a period of general weariness with organizational empty phrases across the United States and internationally, as resistance to DEI initiatives grow, and many organizations are scaling back the very frameworks that previously offered change and reform. Burey delves into that landscape to assert that backing away from authenticity rhetoric – that is, the business jargon that minimizes personal identity as a grouping of surface traits, idiosyncrasies and interests, leaving workers focused on handling how they are perceived rather than how they are treated – is not the answer; we must instead reframe it on our individual conditions.
Minority Staff and the Display of Identity
Via vivid anecdotes and interviews, the author demonstrates how underrepresented staff – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, people with disabilities – quickly realize to adjust which persona will “be acceptable”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people overcompensate by attempting to look acceptable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a reflective surface on which all manner of anticipations are placed: emotional labor, revealing details and continuous act of thankfulness. As the author states, workers are told to share our identities – but without the safeguards or the confidence to endure what arises.
‘In Burey’s words, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but without the defenses or the confidence to withstand what arises.’
Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience
The author shows this situation through the account of an employee, a deaf employee who took it upon himself to inform his team members about deaf culture and communication practices. His willingness to discuss his background – a gesture of transparency the office often praises as “genuineness” – temporarily made routine exchanges smoother. However, Burey points out, that progress was unstable. After personnel shifts erased the unofficial understanding Jason had built, the environment of accessibility vanished. “Everything he taught left with them,” he states tiredly. What stayed was the exhaustion of having to start over, of being held accountable for an institution’s learning curve. According to Burey, this illustrates to be told to share personally lacking safeguards: to endanger oneself in a structure that praises your honesty but declines to institutionalize it into policy. Sincerity becomes a snare when organizations count on personal sharing rather than structural accountability.
Writing Style and Idea of Resistance
The author’s prose is at once understandable and lyrical. She combines scholarly depth with a tone of solidarity: an offer for followers to participate, to challenge, to disagree. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but principled refusal – the act of resisting conformity in workplaces that expect gratitude for simple belonging. To dissent, in her framing, is to interrogate the stories organizations narrate about fairness and belonging, and to reject engagement in customs that perpetuate inequity. It could involve naming bias in a discussion, opting out of unpaid “diversity” effort, or defining borders around how much of oneself is made available to the organization. Dissent, the author proposes, is an declaration of personal dignity in environments that frequently encourage obedience. It represents a discipline of integrity rather than opposition, a approach of asserting that a person’s dignity is not conditional on institutional approval.
Redefining Genuineness
The author also avoids inflexible opposites. The book does not merely discard “sincerity” entirely: instead, she urges its redefinition. For Burey, authenticity is not the raw display of individuality that business environment often celebrates, but a more intentional correspondence between individual principles and one’s actions – a principle that rejects distortion by organizational requirements. Instead of treating sincerity as a directive to overshare or conform to sterilized models of openness, Burey urges followers to maintain the elements of it rooted in truth-telling, personal insight and principled vision. According to Burey, the goal is not to discard genuineness but to move it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and toward interactions and workplaces where trust, justice and answerability make {
