The Ways the Concept of Authenticity on the Job Can Become a Trap for Minority Workers
Throughout the beginning sections of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, writer the author issues a provocation: typical directives to “come as you are” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are far from well-meaning invitations for personal expression – they often become snares. Burey’s debut book – a mix of recollections, investigation, cultural commentary and discussions – attempts to expose how companies appropriate personal identity, transferring the responsibility of organizational transformation on to employees who are already vulnerable.
Professional Experience and Larger Setting
The driving force for the book stems partly in Burey’s personal work history: different positions across retail corporations, new companies and in international development, filtered through her background as a disabled Black female. The dual posture that Burey faces – a back-and-forth between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the driving force of Authentic.
It emerges at a moment of widespread exhaustion with organizational empty phrases across the United States and internationally, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs increase, and numerous companies are cutting back the very systems that earlier assured progress and development. Burey delves into that landscape to argue that backing away from authenticity rhetoric – that is, the organizational speech that reduces individuality as a collection of appearances, peculiarities and pastimes, forcing workers focused on controlling how they are viewed rather than how they are regarded – is not a solution; instead, we need to reinterpret it on our own terms.
Underrepresented Employees and the Act of Persona
Via vivid anecdotes and interviews, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ people, female employees, employees with disabilities – quickly realize to adjust which persona will “be acceptable”. A vulnerability becomes a drawback and people overcompensate by working to appear agreeable. The effort of “bringing your full self” becomes a projection screen on which numerous kinds of expectations are projected: emotional labor, revealing details and constant performance of gratitude. In Burey’s words, we are asked to expose ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the confidence to withstand what comes out.
As Burey explains, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but lacking the protections or the trust to withstand what emerges.’
Case Study: The Story of Jason
She illustrates this phenomenon through the account of an employee, a hearing-impaired staff member who took it upon himself to inform his co-workers about deaf culture and communication norms. His readiness to share his experience – an act of candor the office often applauds as “authenticity” – briefly made everyday communications easier. But as Burey shows, that advancement was fragile. Once employee changes eliminated the unofficial understanding he had established, the atmosphere of inclusion dissolved with it. “Everything he taught left with them,” he notes wearily. What remained was the exhaustion of needing to begin again, of being held accountable for an organization’s educational process. According to Burey, this illustrates to be requested to reveal oneself without protection: to face exposure in a system that celebrates your honesty but fails to formalize it into policy. Authenticity becomes a snare when companies count on personal sharing rather than structural accountability.
Author’s Approach and Concept of Dissent
The author’s prose is both understandable and lyrical. She combines academic thoroughness with a manner of kinship: a call for readers to participate, to question, to disagree. For Burey, dissent at work is not loud rebellion but ethical rejection – the act of rejecting sameness in settings that demand appreciation for mere inclusion. To dissent, according to her view, is to challenge the narratives institutions narrate about fairness and acceptance, and to decline participation in practices that maintain injustice. It may appear as identifying prejudice in a meeting, withdrawing of unpaid “diversity” work, or setting boundaries around how much of oneself is offered to the institution. Resistance, the author proposes, is an affirmation of individual worth in spaces that often encourage compliance. It is a practice of integrity rather than defiance, a approach of asserting that an individual’s worth is not based on corporate endorsement.
Restoring Sincerity
Burey also rejects rigid dichotomies. The book does not merely discard “genuineness” entirely: instead, she urges its reclamation. In Burey’s view, authenticity is far from the raw display of character that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more deliberate correspondence between personal beliefs and individual deeds – an integrity that resists alteration by organizational requirements. Rather than treating genuineness as a mandate to overshare or conform to sterilized models of openness, Burey advises readers to preserve the elements of it grounded in sincerity, self-awareness and moral understanding. In her view, the aim is not to abandon authenticity but to move it – to transfer it from the corporate display practices and into connections and workplaces where trust, justice and accountability make {
