Why ‘Authenticity’ at Work May Transform Into a Snare for People of Color

In the beginning sections of the publication Authentic, writer Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: commonplace injunctions to “bring your true self” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not benevolent calls for individuality – they often become snares. Burey’s debut book – a combination of personal stories, investigation, cultural commentary and interviews – attempts to expose how businesses appropriate personal identity, moving the responsibility of organizational transformation on to employees who are often marginalized.

Personal Journey and Larger Setting

The motivation for the book originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: various roles across retail corporations, emerging businesses and in global development, viewed through her background as a disabled Black female. The dual posture that Burey faces – a tension between asserting oneself and seeking protection – is the core of her work.

It arrives at a time of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across America and other regions, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs increase, and various institutions are reducing the very frameworks that once promised progress and development. Burey enters that landscape to assert that retreating from corporate authenticity talk – namely, the organizational speech that trivializes identity as a collection of surface traits, quirks and interests, keeping workers concerned with controlling how they are perceived rather than how they are treated – is not an effective response; instead, we need to reframe it on our own terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Act of Self

By means of colorful examples and interviews, Burey illustrates how employees from minority groups – individuals of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, disabled individuals – soon understand to calibrate which persona will “be acceptable”. A weakness becomes a liability and people try too hard by working to appear acceptable. The practice of “presenting your true self” becomes a reflective surface on which all manner of anticipations are projected: emotional labor, sharing personal information and ongoing display of appreciation. In Burey’s words, employees are requested to share our identities – but absent the protections or the reliance to survive what comes out.

As Burey explains, workers are told to expose ourselves – but absent the protections or the trust to endure what emerges.’

Case Study: The Story of Jason

The author shows this situation through the narrative of an employee, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to educate his co-workers about the culture of the deaf community and interaction standards. His eagerness to share his experience – an act of candor the workplace often praises as “sincerity” – briefly made routine exchanges smoother. However, Burey points out, that progress was fragile. Once staff turnover eliminated the informal knowledge Jason had built, the culture of access disappeared. “All the information departed with those employees,” he states tiredly. What stayed was the exhaustion of being forced to restart, of being held accountable for an institution’s learning curve. In Burey’s view, this illustrates to be asked to reveal oneself absent defenses: to endanger oneself in a system that praises your honesty but fails to institutionalize it into policy. Genuineness becomes a snare when institutions depend on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.

Writing Style and Concept of Dissent

Burey’s writing is simultaneously understandable and expressive. She combines scholarly depth with a tone of connection: an offer for readers to lean in, to challenge, to dissent. For Burey, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but principled refusal – the act of opposing uniformity in environments that expect gratitude for simple belonging. To dissent, in her framing, is to interrogate the accounts organizations narrate about justice and belonging, and to decline participation in rituals that sustain injustice. It could involve naming bias in a meeting, withdrawing of unpaid “inclusion” work, or setting boundaries around how much of oneself is offered to the company. Resistance, Burey indicates, is an declaration of personal dignity in spaces that typically encourage conformity. It represents a practice of honesty rather than defiance, a method of asserting that a person’s dignity is not conditional on corporate endorsement.

Redefining Genuineness

The author also avoids brittle binaries. Her work avoids just discard “sincerity” wholesale: instead, she advocates for its restoration. For Burey, sincerity is not simply the unfiltered performance of individuality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more thoughtful correspondence between individual principles and individual deeds – a principle that rejects alteration by institutional demands. Rather than viewing sincerity as a mandate to reveal too much or conform to sterilized models of candor, the author encourages followers to keep the aspects of it based on truth-telling, personal insight and ethical clarity. According to Burey, the aim is not to abandon genuineness but to relocate it – to transfer it from the executive theatrical customs and into interactions and organizations where confidence, fairness and answerability make {