Why Being Authentic at Work May Transform Into a Trap for People of Color
In the opening pages of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, author Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: everyday injunctions to “be yourself” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are not benevolent calls for individuality – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a mix of personal stories, studies, cultural critique and discussions – attempts to expose how organizations co-opt identity, moving the burden of organizational transformation on to staff members who are frequently at risk.
Professional Experience and Wider Environment
The driving force for the publication originates in part in the author’s professional path: various roles across business retail, startups and in worldwide progress, filtered through her background as a Black disabled woman. The conflicting stance that Burey faces – a push and pull between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the engine of her work.
It lands at a time of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across America and other regions, as opposition to diversity and inclusion efforts increase, and numerous companies are scaling back the very structures that once promised transformation and improvement. The author steps into that landscape to contend that retreating from authenticity rhetoric – namely, the corporate language that minimizes personal identity as a collection of aesthetics, idiosyncrasies and pastimes, keeping workers concerned with managing how they are seen rather than how they are regarded – is not the answer; we must instead redefine it on our individual conditions.
Marginalized Workers and the Display of Persona
Via vivid anecdotes and conversations, Burey shows how marginalized workers – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ people, female employees, employees with disabilities – learn early on to modulate which identity will “be acceptable”. A sensitive point becomes a drawback and people try too hard by attempting to look palatable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a reflective surface on which numerous kinds of assumptions are cast: emotional labor, revealing details and ongoing display of appreciation. According to Burey, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but absent the defenses or the trust to endure what comes out.
As Burey explains, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but without the safeguards or the reliance to withstand what arises.’
Case Study: Jason’s Experience
She illustrates this phenomenon through the story of Jason, a deaf employee who decided to teach his co-workers about deaf culture and interaction standards. His readiness to discuss his background – a behavior of candor the workplace often praises as “genuineness” – for a short time made everyday communications smoother. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was unstable. Once personnel shifts wiped out the unofficial understanding Jason had built, the culture of access vanished. “All of that knowledge left with them,” he states tiredly. What was left was the fatigue of having to start over, of being made responsible for an organization’s educational process. From the author’s perspective, this illustrates to be asked to reveal oneself without protection: to risk vulnerability in a framework that applauds your openness but refuses to institutionalize it into procedure. Authenticity becomes a snare when institutions rely on personal sharing rather than organizational responsibility.
Author’s Approach and Notion of Opposition
Burey’s writing is both lucid and lyrical. She combines academic thoroughness with a style of connection: an invitation for followers to lean in, to challenge, to oppose. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not noisy protest but moral resistance – the act of rejecting sameness in workplaces that require appreciation for basic acceptance. To oppose, according to her view, is to interrogate the narratives companies tell about justice and belonging, and to refuse participation in practices that maintain inequity. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a meeting, choosing not to participate of uncompensated “inclusion” work, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is made available to the organization. Opposition, she suggests, is an declaration of individual worth in spaces that typically reward obedience. It represents a discipline of honesty rather than rebellion, a method of insisting that a person’s dignity is not based on corporate endorsement.
Redefining Genuineness
The author also avoids rigid dichotomies. The book does not simply toss out “genuineness” entirely: on the contrary, she calls for its reclamation. According to the author, genuineness is far from the unrestricted expression of individuality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more intentional harmony between individual principles and individual deeds – an integrity that resists distortion by corporate expectations. As opposed to viewing authenticity as a requirement to disclose excessively or adapt to sterilized models of openness, the author encourages followers to maintain the aspects of it rooted in truth-telling, personal insight and moral understanding. In her view, the objective is not to abandon authenticity but to move it – to move it out of the executive theatrical customs and into interactions and offices where reliance, fairness and accountability make {
