The Ways ‘Authenticity’ on the Job Can Become a Snare for Minority Workers
In the opening pages of the publication Authentic, writer the author raises a critical point: commonplace advice to “come as you are” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not harmless encouragements for personal expression – they’re traps. This initial publication – a combination of personal stories, studies, societal analysis and conversations – attempts to expose how businesses co-opt identity, moving the burden of corporate reform on to staff members who are already vulnerable.
Personal Journey and Larger Setting
The motivation for the work stems partly in Burey’s personal work history: multiple jobs across business retail, emerging businesses and in global development, filtered through her background as a woman of color with a disability. The two-fold position that Burey experiences – a push and pull between expressing one’s identity and aiming for security – is the engine of the book.
It lands at a moment of widespread exhaustion with corporate clichés across America and other regions, as backlash to DEI initiatives increase, and many organizations are cutting back the very structures that earlier assured change and reform. Burey delves into that arena to argue that retreating from authenticity rhetoric – specifically, the organizational speech that reduces individuality as a grouping of surface traits, peculiarities and hobbies, forcing workers preoccupied with handling how they are perceived rather than how they are handled – is not the answer; rather, we should reinterpret it on our individual conditions.
Underrepresented Employees and the Performance of Persona
By means of detailed stories and interviews, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ people, female employees, disabled individuals – learn early on to modulate which self will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people try too hard by striving to seem agreeable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a display surface on which numerous kinds of expectations are placed: emotional work, revealing details and ongoing display of appreciation. In Burey’s words, we are asked to expose ourselves – but without the protections or the reliance to endure what emerges.
As Burey explains, we are asked to share our identities – but without the defenses or the reliance to withstand what emerges.’
Case Study: The Story of Jason
The author shows this dynamic through the narrative of a worker, a hearing-impaired staff member who chose to inform his co-workers about the culture of the deaf community and communication practices. His readiness to discuss his background – a behavior of candor the workplace often praises as “authenticity” – temporarily made everyday communications more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was fragile. After personnel shifts erased the unofficial understanding Jason had built, the culture of access dissolved with it. “Everything he taught went away with the staff,” he states tiredly. What was left was the fatigue of being forced to restart, of being held accountable for an company’s developmental journey. In Burey’s view, this demonstrates to be requested to reveal oneself without protection: to risk vulnerability in a structure that applauds your honesty but declines to codify it into regulation. Genuineness becomes a snare when companies rely on personal sharing rather than organizational responsibility.
Author’s Approach and Concept of Dissent
The author’s prose is simultaneously lucid and lyrical. She combines intellectual rigor with a tone of solidarity: a call for followers to lean in, to question, to disagree. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not noisy protest but moral resistance – the act of opposing uniformity in settings that require gratitude for simple belonging. To dissent, in her framing, is to challenge the narratives institutions describe about fairness and belonging, and to refuse participation in rituals that maintain inequity. It may appear as identifying prejudice in a meeting, opting out of unpaid “diversity” work, or defining borders around how much of oneself is provided to the institution. Opposition, she suggests, is an declaration of self-respect in settings that frequently encourage obedience. It represents a practice of honesty rather than defiance, a way of maintaining that a person’s dignity is not conditional on corporate endorsement.
Restoring Sincerity
She also refuses brittle binaries. The book does not simply discard “sincerity” entirely: rather, she urges its redefinition. In Burey’s view, sincerity is not the unfiltered performance of individuality that organizational atmosphere often celebrates, but a more intentional harmony between individual principles and individual deeds – a honesty that opposes distortion by corporate expectations. Rather than considering sincerity as a directive to reveal too much or adapt to cleansed standards of transparency, Burey urges readers to preserve the elements of it grounded in truth-telling, individual consciousness and moral understanding. In her view, the aim is not to give up on authenticity but to shift it – to transfer it from the corporate display practices and into relationships and organizations where trust, fairness and answerability make {
