The Ways the Concept of Authenticity on the Job Often Turns Into a Trap for People of Color
Within the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, author the author raises a critical point: typical advice to “bring your true self” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are not harmless encouragements for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. Her first book – a blend of personal stories, investigation, cultural commentary and interviews – seeks to unmask how businesses take over individual identity, transferring the burden of institutional change on to individual workers who are frequently at risk.
Personal Journey and Broader Context
The impetus for the work originates in part in the author’s professional path: different positions across corporate retail, startups and in worldwide progress, filtered through her background as a Black disabled woman. The dual posture that Burey faces – a back-and-forth between asserting oneself and aiming for security – is the driving force of Authentic.
It arrives at a period of general weariness with institutional platitudes across the United States and internationally, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs mount, and numerous companies are cutting back the very structures that previously offered progress and development. The author steps into that landscape to argue that retreating from the language of authenticity – specifically, the organizational speech that trivializes identity as a set of surface traits, quirks and pastimes, keeping workers concerned with controlling how they are seen rather than how they are treated – is not the answer; instead, we need to reframe it on our own terms.
Marginalized Workers and the Act of Identity
By means of detailed stories and discussions, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women workers, employees with disabilities – learn early on to calibrate which self will “pass”. A weakness becomes a drawback and people try too hard by working to appear palatable. The practice of “showing your complete identity” becomes a projection screen on which all manner of assumptions are projected: affective duties, revealing details and ongoing display of gratitude. As the author states, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but without the defenses or the confidence to withstand what arises.
‘In Burey’s words, workers are told to expose ourselves – but without the safeguards or the trust to withstand what emerges.’
Real-Life Example: An Employee’s Journey
The author shows this phenomenon through the account of Jason, a employee with hearing loss who took it upon himself to teach his team members about deaf community norms and interaction standards. His readiness to discuss his background – a gesture of candor the office often praises as “sincerity” – for a short time made everyday communications more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was unstable. After staff turnover erased the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the atmosphere of inclusion disappeared. “All the information went away with the staff,” he states tiredly. What stayed was the weariness of being forced to restart, of being made responsible for an institution’s learning curve. According to Burey, this demonstrates to be asked to share personally absent defenses: to risk vulnerability in a framework that applauds your honesty but refuses to formalize it into regulation. Genuineness becomes a trap when institutions count on individual self-disclosure rather than institutional answerability.
Literary Method and Notion of Opposition
The author’s prose is at once clear and poetic. She combines scholarly depth with a tone of kinship: a call for followers to lean in, to challenge, to oppose. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but ethical rejection – the practice of opposing uniformity in settings that demand gratitude for simple belonging. To dissent, from her perspective, is to question the narratives organizations narrate about justice and inclusion, and to refuse participation in customs that sustain injustice. It might look like calling out discrimination in a discussion, choosing not to participate of uncompensated “inclusion” work, or establishing limits around how much of oneself is provided to the organization. Opposition, the author proposes, is an declaration of self-respect in environments that typically encourage obedience. It represents a practice of principle rather than opposition, a method of insisting that a person’s dignity is not conditional on organizational acceptance.
Redefining Genuineness
She also refuses rigid dichotomies. The book does not simply discard “sincerity” entirely: rather, she calls for its redefinition. In Burey’s view, sincerity is not the unrestricted expression of personality that corporate culture frequently praises, but a more intentional correspondence between one’s values and personal behaviors – a honesty that rejects distortion by institutional demands. Rather than treating genuineness as a directive to disclose excessively or adjust to cleansed standards of transparency, the author encourages audience to maintain the elements of it based on honesty, self-awareness and moral understanding. According to Burey, the goal is not to discard authenticity but to move it – to transfer it from the executive theatrical customs and into relationships and organizations where trust, justice and responsibility make {