Why the Concept of Authenticity at Work Often Turns Into a Pitfall for People of Color
Within the opening pages of the book Authentic, speaker the author issues a provocation: everyday directives to “come as you are” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not benevolent calls for self-expression – they’re traps. Her first book – a combination of memoir, investigation, cultural critique and interviews – seeks to unmask how organizations co-opt identity, transferring the responsibility of corporate reform on to employees who are often marginalized.
Personal Journey and Broader Context
The impetus for the publication originates in part in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across corporate retail, new companies and in global development, interpreted via her perspective as a disabled Black female. The two-fold position that the author encounters – a back-and-forth between asserting oneself and looking for safety – is the driving force of her work.
It arrives at a time of general weariness with institutional platitudes across the US and beyond, as resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs mount, and many organizations are cutting back the very systems that once promised transformation and improvement. Burey delves into that arena to argue that backing away from the language of authenticity – specifically, the organizational speech that reduces individuality as a grouping of appearances, quirks and interests, leaving workers focused on managing how they are viewed rather than how they are handled – is not the answer; we must instead reinterpret it on our personal terms.
Minority Staff and the Performance of Identity
By means of vivid anecdotes and conversations, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – individuals of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, employees with disabilities – learn early on to calibrate which self will “fit in”. A sensitive point becomes a drawback and people overcompensate by striving to seem agreeable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a display surface on which all manner of assumptions are projected: affective duties, revealing details and ongoing display of gratitude. As the author states, workers are told to expose ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the trust to withstand what comes out.
As Burey explains, workers are told to expose ourselves – but without the protections or the confidence to endure what arises.’
Illustrative Story: The Story of Jason
She illustrates this dynamic through the narrative of a worker, a employee with hearing loss who decided to inform his co-workers about deaf culture and communication practices. His willingness to talk about his life – a gesture of candor the office often praises as “genuineness” – temporarily made routine exchanges easier. But as Burey shows, that advancement was precarious. Once staff turnover wiped out the casual awareness the employee had developed, the environment of accessibility dissolved with it. “All the information left with them,” he notes wearily. What was left was the fatigue of having to start over, of being held accountable for an institution’s learning curve. According to Burey, this illustrates to be asked to expose oneself absent defenses: to endanger oneself in a system that praises your transparency but refuses to codify it into regulation. Genuineness becomes a pitfall when organizations rely on employee revelation rather than organizational responsibility.
Author’s Approach and Idea of Resistance
Burey’s writing is at once understandable and lyrical. She blends intellectual rigor with a manner of connection: a call for audience to lean in, to challenge, to disagree. For Burey, workplace opposition is not noisy protest but ethical rejection – the act of rejecting sameness in settings that demand thankfulness for basic acceptance. To resist, from her perspective, is to question the stories institutions describe about equity and inclusion, and to reject engagement in practices that sustain unfairness. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a discussion, opting out of uncompensated “inclusion” work, or establishing limits around how much of oneself is provided to the institution. Resistance, the author proposes, is an declaration of self-respect in environments that typically reward conformity. It is a discipline of honesty rather than rebellion, a approach of asserting that an individual’s worth is not conditional on corporate endorsement.
Redefining Genuineness
She also refuses brittle binaries. Her work avoids just discard “sincerity” completely: rather, she calls for its reclamation. According to the author, sincerity is far from the raw display of individuality that organizational atmosphere typically applauds, but a more intentional alignment between individual principles and personal behaviors – a honesty that resists distortion by corporate expectations. Instead of considering authenticity as a mandate to disclose excessively or adjust to cleansed standards of transparency, the author encourages readers to keep the parts of it rooted in honesty, personal insight and principled vision. In her view, the aim is not to abandon authenticity but to relocate it – to remove it from the boardroom’s performative rituals and toward relationships and workplaces where confidence, justice and accountability make {