Why ‘Authenticity’ in the Workplace Can Become a Pitfall for Minority Workers
Throughout the opening pages of the book Authentic, speaker Burey issues a provocation: commonplace advice to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not benevolent calls for personal expression – they often become snares. Burey’s debut book – a combination of personal stories, research, societal analysis and discussions – attempts to expose how companies co-opt identity, moving the responsibility of organizational transformation on to staff members who are frequently at risk.
Professional Experience and Larger Setting
The impetus for the work originates in part in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across retail corporations, startups and in international development, interpreted via her background as a disabled Black female. The dual posture that Burey experiences – a tension between asserting oneself and looking for safety – is the driving force of her work.
It arrives at a time of widespread exhaustion with institutional platitudes across America and other regions, as resistance to DEI initiatives mount, and various institutions are reducing the very frameworks that previously offered transformation and improvement. Burey delves into that arena to contend that retreating from the language of authenticity – that is, the organizational speech that reduces individuality as a grouping of aesthetics, peculiarities and hobbies, keeping workers preoccupied with managing how they are perceived rather than how they are regarded – is not the answer; we must instead redefine it on our individual conditions.
Marginalized Workers and the Performance of Persona
By means of colorful examples and conversations, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ people, women workers, employees with disabilities – learn early on to adjust which identity will “pass”. A vulnerability becomes a disadvantage and people overcompensate by striving to seem acceptable. The act of “presenting your true self” becomes a projection screen on which numerous kinds of expectations are cast: affective duties, revealing details and ongoing display of gratitude. In Burey’s words, workers are told to share our identities – but lacking the safeguards or the trust to endure what arises.
As Burey explains, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but lacking the defenses or the confidence to endure what arises.’
Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience
Burey demonstrates this situation through the account of Jason, a hearing-impaired staff member who took it upon himself to teach his team members about deaf culture and communication practices. His eagerness to discuss his background – an act of candor the organization often praises as “genuineness” – temporarily made daily interactions more manageable. However, Burey points out, that advancement was fragile. Once employee changes erased the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the culture of access vanished. “All of that knowledge left with them,” he states tiredly. What was left was the fatigue of having to start over, of being held accountable for an company’s developmental journey. In Burey’s view, this illustrates to be told to share personally without protection: to face exposure in a system that praises your openness but fails to codify it into procedure. Sincerity becomes a snare when institutions rely on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.
Literary Method and Idea of Resistance
The author’s prose is simultaneously lucid and expressive. She combines academic thoroughness with a manner of kinship: an invitation for audience to lean in, to challenge, to disagree. For Burey, workplace opposition is not overt defiance but ethical rejection – the act of resisting conformity in environments that require thankfulness for basic acceptance. To oppose, in her framing, is to question the accounts companies describe about fairness and belonging, and to decline involvement in practices that perpetuate unfairness. It could involve identifying prejudice in a gathering, opting out of voluntary “diversity” labor, or establishing limits around how much of one’s personal life is provided to the company. Opposition, she suggests, is an assertion of self-respect in settings that often reward compliance. It constitutes a practice of honesty rather than defiance, a method of asserting that an individual’s worth is not based on corporate endorsement.
Reclaiming Authenticity
The author also avoids rigid dichotomies. The book avoids just discard “authenticity” wholesale: on the contrary, she urges its restoration. According to the author, authenticity is not simply the raw display of individuality that corporate culture typically applauds, but a more deliberate harmony between individual principles and one’s actions – a honesty that resists alteration by organizational requirements. Rather than considering sincerity as a requirement to disclose excessively or adapt to sanitized ideals of transparency, Burey advises readers to keep the parts of it rooted in sincerity, self-awareness and moral understanding. In her view, the goal is not to abandon authenticity but to relocate it – to remove it from the executive theatrical customs and to connections and organizations where reliance, fairness and accountability make {
