How ‘Authenticity’ in the Workplace Can Become a Pitfall for Minority Workers
Within the beginning sections of the book Authentic, author the author issues a provocation: typical directives to “bring your true self” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are far from well-meaning invitations for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. Burey’s debut book – a mix of personal stories, studies, cultural commentary and interviews – seeks to unmask how businesses take over individual identity, moving the responsibility of institutional change on to staff members who are often marginalized.
Professional Experience and Broader Context
The impetus for the book stems partly in the author’s professional path: multiple jobs across retail corporations, emerging businesses and in worldwide progress, viewed through her perspective as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that Burey experiences – a back-and-forth between asserting oneself and looking for safety – is the core of the book.
It emerges at a time of widespread exhaustion with institutional platitudes across America and other regions, as backlash to diversity and inclusion efforts grow, and many organizations are scaling back the very systems that previously offered progress and development. Burey delves into that arena to assert that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – namely, the corporate language that minimizes personal identity as a set of aesthetics, quirks and pastimes, forcing workers preoccupied with handling how they are viewed rather than how they are treated – is not a solution; rather, we should reinterpret it on our personal terms.
Marginalized Workers and the Display of Identity
Through detailed stories and discussions, the author demonstrates how employees from minority groups – employees from diverse backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women, disabled individuals – soon understand to modulate which identity will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a drawback and people overcompensate by working to appear agreeable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a display surface on which various types of expectations are projected: emotional labor, revealing details and continuous act of appreciation. According to Burey, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but lacking the protections or the reliance to survive what emerges.
According to the author, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but lacking the protections or the confidence to withstand what emerges.’
Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience
The author shows this dynamic through the narrative of Jason, a employee with hearing loss who chose to inform his co-workers about the culture of the deaf community and communication practices. His readiness to talk about his life – an act of openness the office often commends as “genuineness” – briefly made daily interactions easier. However, Burey points out, that improvement was unstable. Once employee changes erased the unofficial understanding Jason had built, the environment of accessibility disappeared. “All the information left with them,” he states tiredly. What stayed was the weariness of needing to begin again, of being held accountable for an organization’s educational process. In Burey’s view, this is what it means to be requested to reveal oneself without protection: to face exposure in a system that celebrates your honesty but fails to institutionalize it into regulation. Authenticity becomes a snare when companies depend on individual self-disclosure rather than organizational responsibility.
Writing Style and Concept of Dissent
The author’s prose is simultaneously understandable and lyrical. She blends academic thoroughness with a tone of kinship: an invitation for readers to engage, to question, to disagree. For Burey, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but ethical rejection – the act of resisting conformity in environments that demand appreciation for simple belonging. To dissent, from her perspective, is to question the accounts organizations tell about fairness and inclusion, and to refuse engagement in customs that sustain injustice. It could involve identifying prejudice in a gathering, withdrawing of unpaid “diversity” effort, or establishing limits around how much of one’s personal life is made available to the company. Dissent, Burey indicates, is an affirmation of personal dignity in settings that frequently encourage obedience. It constitutes a practice of integrity rather than defiance, a way of insisting that a person’s dignity is not conditional on corporate endorsement.
Reclaiming Authenticity
Burey also rejects inflexible opposites. Authentic does not simply eliminate “genuineness” wholesale: rather, she urges its redefinition. According to the author, genuineness is not simply the raw display of character that business environment frequently praises, but a more intentional alignment between personal beliefs and one’s actions – a principle that resists alteration by organizational requirements. Instead of considering sincerity as a requirement to disclose excessively or conform to cleansed standards of transparency, Burey advises audience to keep the aspects of it rooted in truth-telling, personal insight and moral understanding. According to Burey, the goal is not to abandon authenticity but to shift it – to remove it from the corporate display practices and into interactions and offices where reliance, justice and accountability make {