How Being Authentic at Work Can Become a Pitfall for Employees of Color
In the opening pages of the publication Authentic, writer Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: everyday advice to “bring your true self” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are far from well-meaning invitations for individuality – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a blend of recollections, studies, cultural commentary and discussions – aims to reveal how organizations take over individual identity, moving the weight of corporate reform on to employees who are often marginalized.
Career Path and Broader Context
The driving force for the publication originates in part in the author’s professional path: multiple jobs across retail corporations, startups and in international development, viewed through her perspective as a Black disabled woman. The conflicting stance that the author encounters – a tension between expressing one’s identity and seeking protection – is the driving force of Authentic.
It lands at a moment of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the US and beyond, as resistance to DEI initiatives mount, and many organizations are reducing the very frameworks that previously offered transformation and improvement. The author steps into that terrain to contend that retreating from the language of authenticity – specifically, the organizational speech that minimizes personal identity as a grouping of surface traits, quirks and pastimes, keeping workers preoccupied with handling how they are perceived rather than how they are treated – is not a solution; rather, we should redefine it on our personal terms.
Minority Staff and the Performance of Identity
Via detailed stories and conversations, Burey illustrates how underrepresented staff – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ people, women workers, people with disabilities – learn early on to calibrate which persona will “fit in”. A vulnerability becomes a disadvantage and people try too hard by working to appear acceptable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a reflective surface on which various types of assumptions are projected: emotional labor, sharing personal information and constant performance of thankfulness. As the author states, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but without the defenses or the reliance to withstand what comes out.
As Burey explains, we are asked to share our identities – but absent the protections or the confidence to survive what comes out.’
Case Study: The Story of Jason
The author shows this dynamic through the story of Jason, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to inform his colleagues about the culture of the deaf community and communication practices. His willingness to talk about his life – an act of candor the organization often applauds as “genuineness” – temporarily made everyday communications smoother. Yet, the author reveals, that progress was precarious. Once personnel shifts erased the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the environment of accessibility disappeared. “All of that knowledge left with them,” he comments exhaustedly. What was left was the exhaustion of having to start over, of having to take charge for an organization’s educational process. According to Burey, this is what it means to be asked to reveal oneself lacking safeguards: to endanger oneself in a framework that applauds your honesty but fails to codify it into policy. Sincerity becomes a snare when companies depend on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.
Writing Style and Notion of Opposition
Her literary style is simultaneously clear and lyrical. She blends scholarly depth with a tone of solidarity: an invitation for audience to lean in, to question, to oppose. In Burey’s opinion, professional resistance is not loud rebellion but ethical rejection – the practice of opposing uniformity in settings that expect gratitude for basic acceptance. To oppose, according to her view, is to question the stories institutions narrate about equity and belonging, and to decline involvement in rituals that sustain unfairness. It could involve identifying prejudice in a gathering, choosing not to participate of voluntary “inclusion” work, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is provided to the company. Resistance, she suggests, is an affirmation of personal dignity in environments that frequently praise compliance. It constitutes a practice of integrity rather than opposition, a method of asserting that one’s humanity is not based on corporate endorsement.
Reclaiming Authenticity
The author also avoids brittle binaries. Her work does not merely eliminate “authenticity” entirely: rather, she urges its redefinition. For Burey, genuineness is not the unrestricted expression of individuality that organizational atmosphere frequently praises, but a more intentional alignment between one’s values and personal behaviors – a principle that resists alteration by organizational requirements. Instead of treating authenticity as a requirement to reveal too much or conform to cleansed standards of openness, the author encourages audience to maintain the aspects of it rooted in truth-telling, self-awareness and principled vision. According to Burey, the objective is not to discard authenticity but to move it – to remove it from the executive theatrical customs and into connections and workplaces where confidence, justice and accountability make {
