By Dr. Leila Mbaye
In the dusty courtyard of a Dakar neighborhood, a griot once told me, “Truth is not only in the words—it is in who speaks them.” At the time, I thought he meant that experience shapes perspective. Years later, I see the sharper edge in his observation: that the authority to speak, to be heard as authentic, is not evenly distributed. It is conferred—or withheld—by culture, politics, and power.
The Politics of Authenticity
In contemporary discourse, “authentic voice” is a prized credential. It implies rootedness, legitimacy, and an insider’s view. But who decides whose voice counts as authentic? A Black Frenchwoman speaking on colonial history may be embraced in Paris but dismissed in Dakar as “too Western.” An Indigenous activist may be celebrated internationally but criticized at home for working within global institutions.
Authenticity, it turns out, is not an intrinsic quality. It is a status, negotiated in the shifting space between speaker, audience, and context.
Gatekeeping and the Burden of Representation
When marginalized groups finally gain access to public platforms, they are often expected to speak as representatives. A queer author is asked to address “the LGBTQ experience,” as if there is one. A Muslim scholar is invited to comment on “what Muslims think,” as if a billion people form a single chorus.
This demand for authenticity can become a trap: the moment one’s perspective diverges from an imagined “community consensus,” credibility is questioned. You are either “true” to your group, or you have “sold out.” The result is a subtle but powerful form of policing—enforcing a narrow, palatable version of identity.
The Market for Identity
Media and publishing industries often reinforce this dynamic, packaging voices to fit audience expectations. The “authentic” immigrant story is one of hardship overcome; the “authentic” feminist in the Global South is one who battles obvious, foreign villains rather than local contradictions. These patterns flatten complexity, turning lived experience into a commodity that can be marketed, consumed, and—if convenient—ignored.
Beyond the Authenticity Trap
Perhaps the more urgent question is not “Who gets to be an authentic voice?” but “Why do we keep asking for one?” The appeal of authenticity often masks a desire for simplicity, for stories that confirm what we already believe about a place, a people, a politics. True engagement demands the opposite: discomfort, contradiction, and the recognition that no voice can capture the totality of a lived reality.
The griot’s wisdom stays with me. Truth may reside in the speaker, yes—but only if we understand that the speaker is never singular. Each voice carries multitudes: the ancestral and the personal, the local and the global, the private and the performed. To honor that complexity is to loosen our grip on “authenticity” and listen, instead, for the richness of the imperfect, plural human story.
