Why Being Authentic at Work Often Turns Into a Pitfall for Minority Workers
Within the beginning sections of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey issues a provocation: typical directives to “be yourself” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not benevolent calls for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. Her first book – a combination of personal stories, studies, societal analysis and interviews – seeks to unmask how companies appropriate personal identity, shifting the responsibility of corporate reform on to staff members who are often marginalized.
Professional Experience and Larger Setting
The driving force for the work lies partially in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across corporate retail, startups and in global development, viewed through her perspective as a disabled Black female. The two-fold position that the author encounters – a tension between asserting oneself and seeking protection – is the core of Authentic.
It emerges at a moment of general weariness with corporate clichés across America and other regions, as opposition to diversity and inclusion efforts mount, and many organizations are scaling back the very structures that once promised change and reform. The author steps into that arena to argue that retreating from authenticity rhetoric – namely, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a set of surface traits, quirks and pastimes, leaving workers focused on controlling how they are seen rather than how they are handled – is not a solution; we must instead reframe it on our personal terms.
Marginalized Workers and the Act of Self
By means of colorful examples and discussions, the author demonstrates how underrepresented staff – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ people, female employees, people with disabilities – quickly realize to modulate which identity will “fit in”. A weakness becomes a drawback and people compensate excessively by working to appear palatable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a projection screen on which various types of anticipations are cast: affective duties, sharing personal information and ongoing display of thankfulness. In Burey’s words, we are asked to expose ourselves – but lacking the protections or the confidence to withstand what emerges.
According to the author, employees are requested to share our identities – but absent the safeguards or the trust to endure what comes out.’
Real-Life Example: Jason’s Experience
She illustrates this situation through the account of an employee, a deaf employee who took it upon himself to teach his co-workers about deaf community norms and interaction standards. His willingness to share his experience – an act of candor the organization often praises as “genuineness” – for a short time made everyday communications smoother. But as Burey shows, that progress was precarious. When staff turnover wiped out the unofficial understanding Jason had built, the culture of access vanished. “Everything he taught departed with those employees,” he notes wearily. What remained was the weariness of needing to begin again, of being made responsible for an organization’s educational process. From the author’s perspective, this demonstrates to be requested to share personally without protection: to risk vulnerability in a structure that applauds your honesty but refuses to formalize it into regulation. Sincerity becomes a trap when institutions rely on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.
Writing Style and Concept of Dissent
The author’s prose is simultaneously understandable and lyrical. She blends academic thoroughness with a tone of kinship: an offer for readers to engage, to interrogate, to disagree. In Burey’s opinion, dissent at work is not loud rebellion but moral resistance – the act of rejecting sameness in environments that expect appreciation for basic acceptance. To oppose, from her perspective, is to interrogate the narratives companies narrate about equity and inclusion, and to decline participation in practices that maintain unfairness. It might look like calling out discrimination in a discussion, opting out of unpaid “inclusion” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s identity is made available to the company. Resistance, Burey indicates, is an declaration of personal dignity in environments that typically encourage compliance. It constitutes a practice of principle rather than rebellion, a way of asserting that one’s humanity is not based on institutional approval.
Restoring Sincerity
Burey also rejects brittle binaries. Authentic avoids just discard “sincerity” entirely: instead, she advocates for its reclamation. In Burey’s view, authenticity is not simply the unfiltered performance of individuality that organizational atmosphere typically applauds, but a more thoughtful alignment between personal beliefs and individual deeds – a honesty that opposes manipulation by institutional demands. As opposed to treating sincerity as a directive to overshare or adjust to cleansed standards of candor, Burey urges readers to maintain the aspects of it rooted in truth-telling, self-awareness and principled vision. From her perspective, the goal is not to discard authenticity but to move it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and into connections and organizations where confidence, fairness and responsibility make {
