How ‘Authenticity’ at Work Can Become a Snare for Employees of Color

Within the opening pages of the publication Authentic, writer Jodi-Ann Burey issues a provocation: everyday injunctions to “come as you are” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a blend of memoir, research, societal analysis and conversations – aims to reveal how businesses take over individual identity, moving the responsibility of corporate reform on to staff members who are often marginalized.

Career Path and Wider Environment

The impetus for the publication stems partly in the author’s professional path: multiple jobs across business retail, emerging businesses and in worldwide progress, viewed through her experience as a disabled Black female. The conflicting stance that the author encounters – a tension between expressing one’s identity and aiming for security – is the driving force of Authentic.

It emerges at a time of collective fatigue with corporate clichés across the US and beyond, as resistance to diversity and inclusion efforts grow, and numerous companies are scaling back the very systems that earlier assured transformation and improvement. Burey enters that arena to argue that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – that is, the corporate language that reduces individuality as a collection of surface traits, peculiarities and hobbies, forcing workers preoccupied with managing how they are seen rather than how they are treated – is not a solution; rather, we should reframe it on our own terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Act of Persona

Through colorful examples and conversations, the author demonstrates how employees from minority groups – people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women workers, disabled individuals – learn early on to modulate which persona will “fit in”. A weakness becomes a liability and people compensate excessively by attempting to look acceptable. The act of “showing your complete identity” becomes a projection screen on which various types of assumptions are placed: affective duties, sharing personal information and continuous act of thankfulness. According to Burey, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but without the protections or the reliance to endure what emerges.

As Burey explains, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the trust to survive what comes out.’

Illustrative Story: The Story of Jason

The author shows this dynamic through the narrative of Jason, a deaf employee who chose to inform his colleagues about deaf culture and interaction standards. His willingness to share his experience – a gesture of openness the office often praises as “sincerity” – for a short time made daily interactions easier. Yet, the author reveals, that progress was unstable. Once employee changes erased the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the environment of accessibility vanished. “All of that knowledge went away with the staff,” he comments exhaustedly. What remained was the fatigue of having to start over, of being held accountable for an company’s developmental journey. From the author’s perspective, this demonstrates to be asked to share personally without protection: to risk vulnerability in a structure that praises your openness but declines to institutionalize it into policy. Genuineness becomes a snare when organizations depend on personal sharing rather than institutional answerability.

Writing Style and Idea of Resistance

Her literary style is both lucid and lyrical. She blends scholarly depth with a manner of solidarity: an invitation for followers to engage, to interrogate, to disagree. For Burey, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but principled refusal – the act of opposing uniformity in environments that expect thankfulness for basic acceptance. To oppose, in her framing, is to challenge the narratives organizations describe about equity and acceptance, and to refuse involvement in practices that sustain inequity. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a meeting, choosing not to participate of uncompensated “diversity” work, or defining borders around how much of oneself is offered to the company. Opposition, Burey indicates, is an assertion of individual worth in spaces that often praise compliance. It represents a practice of honesty rather than rebellion, a approach of maintaining that one’s humanity is not based on corporate endorsement.

Redefining Genuineness

Burey also rejects inflexible opposites. The book does not simply toss out “genuineness” wholesale: instead, she urges its restoration. According to the author, sincerity is not simply the unfiltered performance of individuality that business environment often celebrates, but a more deliberate harmony between one’s values and one’s actions – an integrity that rejects distortion by corporate expectations. Rather than viewing sincerity as a requirement to reveal too much or conform to cleansed standards of transparency, the author encourages audience to maintain the aspects of it rooted in sincerity, individual consciousness and moral understanding. According to Burey, the goal is not to discard authenticity but to shift it – to remove it from the executive theatrical customs and to relationships and organizations where trust, fairness and accountability make {