How Being Authentic at Work Often Turns Into a Pitfall for People of Color

In the beginning sections of the book Authentic, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey raises a critical point: typical advice to “be yourself” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not benevolent calls for individuality – they’re traps. This initial publication – a combination of personal stories, studies, cultural commentary and conversations – seeks to unmask how businesses co-opt identity, shifting the weight of organizational transformation on to staff members who are often marginalized.

Personal Journey and Larger Setting

The motivation for the book lies partially in the author’s professional path: different positions across corporate retail, startups and in worldwide progress, interpreted via her background as a disabled Black female. The two-fold position that Burey faces – a tension between expressing one’s identity and looking for safety – is the core of Authentic.

It arrives at a period of collective fatigue with organizational empty phrases across the United States and internationally, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs increase, and numerous companies are cutting back the very frameworks that once promised progress and development. The author steps into that landscape to argue that withdrawing from authenticity rhetoric – specifically, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a set of surface traits, peculiarities and interests, forcing workers preoccupied with managing how they are viewed rather than how they are regarded – is not an effective response; we must instead redefine it on our own terms.

Underrepresented Employees and the Act of Persona

Through detailed stories and discussions, Burey shows how employees from minority groups – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ people, female employees, employees with disabilities – learn early on to calibrate which self will “be acceptable”. A weakness becomes a drawback and people compensate excessively by striving to seem palatable. The effort of “showing your complete identity” becomes a projection screen on which various types of expectations are cast: emotional work, sharing personal information and continuous act of gratitude. As the author states, workers are told to share our identities – but lacking the defenses or the trust to endure what emerges.

According to the author, employees are requested to share our identities – but lacking the defenses or the trust to survive what arises.’

Case Study: An Employee’s Journey

The author shows this phenomenon through the narrative of a worker, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to teach his team members about the culture of the deaf community and interaction standards. His eagerness to talk about his life – an act of openness the workplace often applauds as “authenticity” – temporarily made everyday communications easier. However, Burey points out, that advancement was precarious. Once employee changes eliminated the unofficial understanding Jason had built, the environment of accessibility dissolved with it. “All the information went away with the staff,” he notes wearily. What remained was the weariness of having to start over, of being made responsible for an organization’s educational process. According to Burey, this demonstrates to be asked to expose oneself without protection: to risk vulnerability in a structure that applauds your honesty but declines to institutionalize it into policy. Sincerity becomes a snare when organizations rely on personal sharing rather than structural accountability.

Writing Style and Notion of Opposition

Her literary style is simultaneously lucid and lyrical. She blends intellectual rigor with a tone of solidarity: an invitation for audience to participate, to challenge, to dissent. For Burey, dissent at work is not noisy protest but ethical rejection – the act of resisting conformity in environments that demand appreciation for basic acceptance. To resist, according to her view, is to interrogate the stories organizations narrate about justice and acceptance, and to decline engagement in customs that perpetuate injustice. It might look like calling out discrimination in a discussion, opting out of unpaid “diversity” effort, or defining borders around how much of one’s personal life is made available to the organization. Opposition, Burey indicates, is an affirmation of self-respect in spaces that frequently praise conformity. It is a practice of honesty rather than opposition, a way of maintaining that a person’s dignity is not based on organizational acceptance.

Restoring Sincerity

The author also avoids inflexible opposites. Her work does not simply toss out “genuineness” entirely: instead, she calls for its redefinition. For Burey, genuineness is far from the unfiltered performance of individuality that organizational atmosphere frequently praises, but a more thoughtful harmony between one’s values and one’s actions – a honesty that rejects manipulation by institutional demands. Rather than viewing authenticity as a directive to overshare or adjust to sanitized ideals of transparency, Burey advises audience to preserve the parts of it rooted in truth-telling, self-awareness and moral understanding. In her view, the objective is not to give up on genuineness but to shift it – to remove it from the corporate display practices and toward connections and workplaces where confidence, equity and responsibility make {