How ‘Authenticity’ on the Job Can Become a Pitfall for Employees of Color
In the beginning sections of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, writer Burey poses a challenge: commonplace injunctions to “bring your true self” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not harmless encouragements for individuality – they’re traps. Burey’s debut book – a combination of recollections, research, societal analysis and discussions – seeks to unmask how companies co-opt identity, transferring the burden of organizational transformation on to employees who are frequently at risk.
Career Path and Wider Environment
The driving force for the publication stems partly in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across business retail, emerging businesses and in international development, interpreted via her perspective as a disabled Black female. The two-fold position that Burey experiences – a back-and-forth between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the driving force of the book.
It emerges at a period of general weariness with organizational empty phrases across the US and beyond, as resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs mount, and various institutions are cutting back the very systems that once promised change and reform. Burey enters that landscape to contend that retreating from corporate authenticity talk – that is, the business jargon that reduces individuality as a collection of surface traits, idiosyncrasies and interests, keeping workers preoccupied with handling how they are seen rather than how they are regarded – is not the answer; rather, we should reframe it on our individual conditions.
Underrepresented Employees and the Performance of Persona
Through vivid anecdotes and discussions, the author demonstrates how underrepresented staff – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, people with disabilities – quickly realize to modulate which persona will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people compensate excessively by working to appear acceptable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a reflective surface on which numerous kinds of expectations are projected: emotional labor, sharing personal information and continuous act of thankfulness. According to Burey, workers are told to share our identities – but lacking the protections or the reliance to survive what comes out.
‘In Burey’s words, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but absent the safeguards or the confidence to withstand what arises.’
Real-Life Example: Jason’s Experience
Burey demonstrates this phenomenon through the story of an employee, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to teach his co-workers about deaf culture and communication norms. His willingness to talk about his life – an act of openness the office often applauds as “genuineness” – for a short time made everyday communications smoother. However, Burey points out, that improvement was unstable. Once staff turnover wiped out the informal knowledge the employee had developed, the atmosphere of inclusion vanished. “All the information left with them,” he states tiredly. What remained was the weariness of having to start over, of being made responsible for an organization’s educational process. According to Burey, this demonstrates to be asked to reveal oneself without protection: to face exposure in a system that praises your openness but fails to formalize it into procedure. Sincerity becomes a snare when companies depend on personal sharing rather than institutional answerability.
Literary Method and Notion of Opposition
Burey’s writing is both clear and expressive. She blends intellectual rigor with a tone of connection: a call for readers to engage, to question, to disagree. According to the author, professional resistance is not overt defiance but moral resistance – the practice of opposing uniformity in environments that demand appreciation for mere inclusion. To dissent, in her framing, is to challenge the narratives companies tell about justice and belonging, and to decline participation in rituals that maintain injustice. It might look like naming bias in a discussion, opting out of unpaid “diversity” work, or establishing limits around how much of one’s personal life is offered to the company. Dissent, the author proposes, is an assertion of self-respect in spaces that often reward conformity. It is a habit of principle rather than rebellion, a way of insisting that one’s humanity is not conditional on organizational acceptance.
Restoring Sincerity
Burey also rejects rigid dichotomies. The book does not merely eliminate “genuineness” entirely: rather, she calls for its restoration. In Burey’s view, authenticity is not simply the unrestricted expression of character that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more thoughtful alignment between one’s values and one’s actions – a honesty that rejects alteration by corporate expectations. Rather than considering sincerity as a mandate to reveal too much or conform to sanitized ideals of openness, Burey urges followers to keep the parts of it based on truth-telling, self-awareness and principled vision. According to Burey, the objective is not to give up on sincerity but to relocate it – to remove it from the boardroom’s performative rituals and toward relationships and workplaces where reliance, equity and answerability make {