The Ways ‘Authenticity’ in the Workplace Can Become a Pitfall for People of Color

Throughout the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, writer the author raises a critical point: everyday 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. Her first book – a mix of memoir, investigation, cultural commentary and conversations – attempts to expose how businesses appropriate personal identity, shifting the responsibility of corporate reform on to individual workers who are often marginalized.

Career Path and Larger Setting

The driving force for the publication stems partly in Burey’s own career trajectory: various roles across corporate retail, startups and in international development, interpreted via her perspective as a woman of color with a disability. The two-fold position that the author encounters – a back-and-forth between expressing one’s identity and seeking protection – is the engine of the book.

It emerges at a period of widespread exhaustion with organizational empty phrases across America and other regions, as opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs grow, and various institutions are scaling back the very systems that previously offered progress and development. The author steps into that arena to argue that backing away from corporate authenticity talk – that is, the business jargon that minimizes personal identity as a collection of surface traits, quirks and hobbies, leaving workers preoccupied with managing how they are seen rather than how they are treated – is not a solution; rather, we should reinterpret it on our individual conditions.

Minority Staff and the Performance of Self

Via vivid anecdotes and conversations, the author demonstrates how marginalized workers – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, female employees, people with disabilities – quickly realize to calibrate which identity will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people try too hard by working to appear palatable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a projection screen on which numerous kinds of expectations are placed: emotional work, revealing details and continuous act of appreciation. As the author states, we are asked to expose ourselves – but lacking the defenses or the reliance to survive what emerges.

According to the author, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but lacking the defenses or the confidence to endure what arises.’

Case Study: An Employee’s Journey

She illustrates this situation through the story of Jason, a deaf employee who chose to teach his colleagues about the culture of the deaf community and communication norms. His willingness to share his experience – an act of openness the organization often commends as “authenticity” – temporarily made daily interactions smoother. Yet, the author reveals, that progress was precarious. Once employee changes eliminated the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the culture of access dissolved with it. “Everything he taught departed with those employees,” he notes wearily. What remained was the weariness of having to start over, of having to take charge for an organization’s educational process. According to Burey, this illustrates to be told to expose oneself lacking safeguards: to face exposure in a framework that praises your openness but declines to codify it into regulation. Genuineness becomes a snare when organizations count on employee revelation rather than institutional answerability.

Writing Style and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is both lucid and expressive. She marries scholarly depth with a style of solidarity: a call for readers to engage, to question, to oppose. For Burey, workplace opposition is not noisy protest but moral resistance – the practice of opposing uniformity in workplaces that demand thankfulness for basic acceptance. To dissent, in her framing, is to question the accounts companies tell about equity and inclusion, and to reject participation in customs that maintain inequity. It could involve identifying prejudice in a discussion, choosing not to participate of voluntary “equity” work, or establishing limits around how much of one’s identity is made available to the institution. Resistance, the author proposes, is an assertion of personal dignity in settings that typically encourage obedience. It constitutes a discipline of principle rather than rebellion, a method of insisting that a person’s dignity is not conditional on corporate endorsement.

Redefining Genuineness

She also refuses inflexible opposites. The book does not merely eliminate “genuineness” wholesale: rather, she calls for its redefinition. For Burey, genuineness is far from the unrestricted expression of personality that organizational atmosphere typically applauds, but a more intentional alignment between personal beliefs and one’s actions – a principle that resists manipulation by organizational requirements. Instead of viewing authenticity as a mandate to overshare or conform to sterilized models of transparency, the author encourages readers to preserve the aspects of it rooted in honesty, personal insight and principled vision. In her view, the aim is not to abandon genuineness but to move it – to remove it from the executive theatrical customs and toward interactions and organizations where confidence, fairness and responsibility make {