Why Being Authentic in the Workplace May Transform Into a Snare for Employees of Color
Within the beginning sections of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, author the author issues a provocation: commonplace injunctions to “bring your true self” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are far from well-meaning invitations for individuality – they can be pitfalls. Burey’s debut book – a mix of personal stories, investigation, societal analysis and interviews – seeks to unmask how organizations take over individual identity, transferring the weight of organizational transformation on to employees who are already vulnerable.
Personal Journey and Wider Environment
The driving force for the publication stems partly in Burey’s own career trajectory: multiple jobs across corporate retail, emerging businesses and in international development, interpreted via her background as a disabled Black female. The two-fold position that Burey experiences – a back-and-forth between expressing one’s identity and aiming for security – is the engine of Authentic.
It arrives at a time of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the United States and internationally, as resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs mount, and numerous companies are reducing the very frameworks that earlier assured transformation and improvement. Burey delves into that terrain to argue that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – that is, the organizational speech that trivializes identity as a set of appearances, peculiarities and pastimes, leaving workers concerned with managing how they are perceived rather than how they are regarded – is not an effective response; we must instead reinterpret it on our individual conditions.
Minority Staff and the Display of Persona
By means of vivid anecdotes and conversations, the author demonstrates how employees from minority groups – individuals of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, people with disabilities – learn early on to adjust which self will “fit in”. A weakness becomes a drawback and people overcompensate by striving to seem agreeable. The effort of “presenting your true self” becomes a projection screen on which various types of assumptions are placed: affective duties, disclosure and constant performance of gratitude. According to Burey, we are asked to expose ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the confidence to withstand what arises.
‘In Burey’s words, workers are told to expose ourselves – but without the protections or the trust to survive what arises.’
Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience
Burey demonstrates this dynamic through the account of a worker, a deaf employee who decided to teach his colleagues about deaf community norms and communication norms. His willingness to share his experience – an act of transparency the workplace often commends as “sincerity” – temporarily made routine exchanges easier. Yet, the author reveals, that progress was fragile. When personnel shifts eliminated the casual awareness Jason had built, the environment of accessibility disappeared. “Everything he taught went away with the staff,” he states tiredly. What remained was the weariness of having to start over, of having to take charge for an company’s developmental journey. In Burey’s view, this demonstrates to be told to expose oneself absent defenses: to face exposure in a framework that applauds your openness but refuses to formalize it into policy. Genuineness becomes a trap when organizations depend on employee revelation rather than structural accountability.
Writing Style and Notion of Opposition
Her literary style is both clear and expressive. She combines scholarly depth with a manner of kinship: an offer for audience to lean in, to question, to dissent. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but ethical rejection – the act of resisting conformity in environments that expect appreciation for mere inclusion. To resist, from her perspective, is to question the accounts companies narrate about equity and belonging, and to refuse engagement in customs that sustain unfairness. It might look like calling out discrimination in a gathering, opting out of uncompensated “inclusion” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s personal life is offered to the institution. Resistance, the author proposes, is an affirmation of personal dignity in settings that frequently praise conformity. It is a discipline of principle rather than opposition, a method of insisting that one’s humanity is not conditional on institutional approval.
Reclaiming Authenticity
She also refuses brittle binaries. The book does not merely discard “sincerity” completely: instead, she advocates for its reclamation. For Burey, sincerity is not simply the raw display of personality that business environment typically applauds, but a more intentional alignment between personal beliefs and individual deeds – an integrity that opposes manipulation by institutional demands. Rather than viewing authenticity as a requirement to disclose excessively or adjust to cleansed standards of openness, the author encourages readers to maintain the elements of it rooted in truth-telling, personal insight and ethical clarity. In her view, the goal is not to discard sincerity but to shift it – to transfer it from the executive theatrical customs and into connections and workplaces where reliance, justice and responsibility make {