The Ways Being Authentic at Work May Transform Into a Trap for Employees of Color
Within the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, writer Jodi-Ann Burey raises a critical point: everyday advice to “be yourself” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for personal expression – they can be pitfalls. Burey’s debut book – a blend of memoir, research, societal analysis and interviews – attempts to expose how organizations appropriate personal identity, moving the responsibility of corporate reform on to individual workers who are frequently at risk.
Personal Journey and Larger Setting
The driving force for the work originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: multiple jobs across retail corporations, startups and in worldwide progress, interpreted via her background as a woman of color with a disability. The conflicting stance that Burey experiences – a push and pull between expressing one’s identity and aiming for security – is the driving force of the book.
It emerges at a time of general weariness with corporate clichés across the US and beyond, as opposition to diversity and inclusion efforts increase, and many organizations are cutting back the very frameworks that earlier assured change and reform. Burey delves into that terrain to contend that retreating from authenticity rhetoric – that is, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a collection of appearances, idiosyncrasies and pastimes, leaving workers focused on controlling how they are seen rather than how they are handled – is not a solution; instead, we need to reinterpret it on our personal terms.
Marginalized Workers and the Display of Identity
Through detailed stories and discussions, Burey illustrates how employees from minority groups – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, disabled individuals – soon understand to modulate which self will “fit in”. A weakness becomes a disadvantage and people compensate excessively by striving to seem acceptable. The act of “showing your complete identity” becomes a display surface on which all manner of expectations are cast: emotional labor, revealing details and ongoing display of appreciation. According to Burey, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the reliance to withstand what comes out.
As Burey explains, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but lacking the protections or the confidence to endure what comes out.’
Real-Life Example: Jason’s Experience
She illustrates this dynamic through the account of a worker, a employee with hearing loss who decided to teach his colleagues about the culture of the deaf community and communication norms. His eagerness to discuss his background – a gesture of candor the workplace often applauds as “genuineness” – briefly made daily interactions easier. Yet, the author reveals, that progress was precarious. Once personnel shifts erased the casual awareness Jason had built, the atmosphere of inclusion vanished. “All of that knowledge left with them,” he states tiredly. What was left was the fatigue of being forced to restart, of being held accountable for an company’s developmental journey. From the author’s perspective, this is what it means to be told to reveal oneself lacking safeguards: to risk vulnerability in a structure that celebrates your transparency but declines to formalize it into regulation. Genuineness becomes a snare when companies depend on individual self-disclosure rather than institutional answerability.
Author’s Approach and Concept of Dissent
Burey’s writing is at once understandable and poetic. She blends scholarly depth with a style of kinship: a call for followers to lean in, to interrogate, to oppose. According to the author, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but moral resistance – the practice of resisting conformity in settings that require thankfulness for simple belonging. To oppose, from her perspective, is to question the stories institutions tell about justice and belonging, and to reject engagement in practices that maintain unfairness. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a discussion, withdrawing of unpaid “equity” work, or establishing limits around how much of one’s identity is made available to the company. Dissent, Burey indicates, is an declaration of personal dignity in environments that typically encourage compliance. It represents a habit of principle rather than rebellion, a method of asserting that one’s humanity is not based on organizational acceptance.
Restoring Sincerity
The author also avoids brittle binaries. Authentic does not simply discard “authenticity” completely: rather, she advocates for its restoration. In Burey’s view, sincerity is not simply the unrestricted expression of individuality that organizational atmosphere frequently praises, but a more deliberate alignment between individual principles and personal behaviors – a principle that rejects alteration by corporate expectations. Rather than considering genuineness as a mandate to disclose excessively or conform to sanitized ideals of openness, Burey urges followers to maintain the parts of it based on sincerity, individual consciousness and ethical clarity. In her view, the aim is not to give up on authenticity but to relocate it – to transfer it from the corporate display practices and to connections and organizations where trust, justice and responsibility make {
