Why ‘Authenticity’ at Work Often Turns Into a Pitfall for Employees of Color
Within the opening pages of the book Authentic, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey raises a critical point: typical directives to “be yourself” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for self-expression – they’re traps. Burey’s debut book – a mix of personal stories, research, cultural commentary and discussions – aims to reveal how companies appropriate personal identity, shifting the burden of corporate reform on to individual workers who are already vulnerable.
Professional Experience and Wider Environment
The impetus for the book originates in part in the author’s professional path: various roles across corporate retail, emerging businesses and in global development, filtered through her perspective as a woman of color with a disability. The conflicting stance that the author encounters – a push and pull between expressing one’s identity and looking for safety – is the engine of Authentic.
It emerges at a period of general weariness with organizational empty phrases across America and other regions, as opposition to diversity and inclusion efforts mount, and various institutions are reducing the very systems that earlier assured transformation and improvement. Burey enters that arena to argue that retreating from the language of authenticity – namely, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a grouping of appearances, peculiarities and hobbies, leaving workers concerned with handling how they are viewed rather than how they are treated – is not an effective response; rather, we should reinterpret it on our own terms.
Minority Staff and the Display of Self
Via detailed stories and interviews, Burey shows how employees from minority groups – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, employees with disabilities – quickly realize to calibrate which persona will “be acceptable”. A sensitive point becomes a disadvantage and people try too hard by attempting to look palatable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a projection screen on which various types of expectations are cast: emotional labor, revealing details and constant performance of appreciation. According to Burey, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but absent the protections or the trust to survive what arises.
According to the author, workers are told to expose ourselves – but without the protections or the reliance to endure what arises.’
Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience
She illustrates this dynamic through the account of a worker, a employee with hearing loss who took it upon himself to educate his colleagues about the culture of the deaf community and interaction standards. His eagerness to talk about his life – a gesture of transparency the office often praises as “genuineness” – briefly made daily interactions smoother. However, Burey points out, that progress was precarious. After staff turnover wiped out the informal knowledge the employee had developed, the culture of access vanished. “Everything he taught left with them,” he notes wearily. What stayed was the weariness of having to start over, of having to take charge for an institution’s learning curve. From the author’s perspective, this demonstrates to be asked to expose oneself absent defenses: to risk vulnerability in a framework that praises your transparency but fails to codify it into procedure. Sincerity becomes a snare when organizations depend on personal sharing rather than structural accountability.
Literary Method and Idea of Resistance
The author’s prose is at once lucid and lyrical. She combines scholarly depth with a style of connection: a call for audience to lean in, to question, to disagree. For Burey, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but principled refusal – the practice of resisting conformity in workplaces that demand appreciation for mere inclusion. To oppose, according to her view, is to challenge the narratives organizations describe about fairness and belonging, and to reject participation in practices that maintain injustice. It could involve calling out discrimination in a discussion, choosing not to participate of unpaid “equity” work, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is made available to the organization. Dissent, the author proposes, is an declaration of individual worth in environments that frequently reward obedience. It is a habit of honesty rather than rebellion, a approach of asserting that one’s humanity is not dependent on organizational acceptance.
Restoring Sincerity
The author also avoids rigid dichotomies. Authentic does not merely toss out “genuineness” entirely: on the contrary, she calls for its reclamation. According to the author, sincerity is not simply the raw display of personality that organizational atmosphere typically applauds, but a more thoughtful harmony between personal beliefs and one’s actions – a principle that rejects distortion by institutional demands. Rather than considering sincerity as a mandate to disclose excessively or conform to sanitized ideals of openness, Burey advises followers to maintain the elements of it rooted in honesty, self-awareness and moral understanding. According to Burey, the objective is not to abandon authenticity but to shift it – to move it out of the executive theatrical customs and into connections and organizations where confidence, equity and accountability make {
