Two years ago, Tina Fey appeared on “Las Culturistas,” one of my favorite podcasts, and delivered a line that immediately ricocheted across the internet and stuck with me personally: “Authenticity is dangerous and expensive.”
Fey’s statement landed both with me and the wider world because it felt true. I was in the midst of a deep exploration about authenticity for my forthcoming book in which I draw a conclusion that her pithy remark sums up well: Authenticity — at least as it is currently understood and enforced — is not a liberating ideal for people of color. Instead it operates as a sorting mechanism that rewards those whose identities already align with power and penalizes those whose truth challenges it.
