How ‘Authenticity’ in the Workplace May Transform Into a Trap for People of Color
In the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, author the author issues a provocation: commonplace advice to “be yourself” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for self-expression – they often become snares. Her first book – a mix of recollections, research, societal analysis and conversations – aims to reveal how companies co-opt identity, transferring the responsibility of corporate reform on to individual workers who are frequently at risk.
Personal Journey and Broader Context
The motivation for the book lies partially in Burey’s own career trajectory: different positions across corporate retail, startups and in worldwide progress, filtered through her perspective as a disabled Black female. The two-fold position that Burey faces – a tension between asserting oneself and looking for safety – is the engine of her work.
It arrives at a period of general weariness with institutional platitudes across America and other regions, as resistance to DEI initiatives mount, and numerous companies are cutting back the very systems that previously offered change and reform. Burey enters that landscape to argue that backing away from the language of authenticity – specifically, the corporate language that reduces individuality as a collection of aesthetics, quirks and pastimes, forcing workers focused on handling how they are perceived rather than how they are regarded – is not a solution; we must instead reframe it on our personal terms.
Underrepresented Employees and the Act of Persona
Through detailed stories and discussions, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, women workers, people with disabilities – quickly realize to adjust which self will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people compensate excessively by attempting to look agreeable. The effort of “showing your complete identity” becomes a display surface on which all manner of anticipations are projected: emotional labor, sharing personal information and ongoing display of gratitude. In Burey’s words, we are asked to share our identities – but absent the safeguards or the confidence to withstand what comes out.
According to the author, workers are told to expose ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the confidence to survive what comes out.’
Real-Life Example: The Story of Jason
The author shows this phenomenon through the narrative of an employee, a deaf employee who chose to inform his colleagues about the culture of the deaf community and communication practices. His willingness to talk about his life – an act of candor the office often praises as “sincerity” – temporarily made everyday communications smoother. But as Burey shows, that progress was fragile. After personnel shifts erased the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the atmosphere of inclusion disappeared. “Everything he taught left with them,” he states tiredly. What was left was the fatigue of being forced to restart, of being made responsible for an organization’s educational process. In Burey’s view, this illustrates to be asked to share personally absent defenses: to risk vulnerability in a structure that applauds your honesty but fails to codify it into regulation. Authenticity becomes a snare when organizations depend on personal sharing rather than institutional answerability.
Writing Style and Concept of Dissent
Burey’s writing is both lucid and expressive. She marries academic thoroughness with a style of kinship: a call for readers to participate, to question, to dissent. In Burey’s opinion, dissent at work is not noisy protest but principled refusal – the practice of rejecting sameness in environments that expect thankfulness for simple belonging. To resist, according to her view, is to challenge the narratives organizations tell about justice and inclusion, and to reject engagement in customs that perpetuate unfairness. It may appear as identifying prejudice in a gathering, opting out of voluntary “diversity” labor, or defining borders around how much of oneself is provided to the institution. Resistance, Burey indicates, is an assertion of self-respect in environments that often reward compliance. It represents a habit of principle rather than opposition, a way of asserting that a person’s dignity is not conditional on corporate endorsement.
Redefining Genuineness
She also refuses rigid dichotomies. Her work does not merely discard “genuineness” wholesale: rather, she advocates for its restoration. For Burey, genuineness is not the unrestricted expression of individuality that organizational atmosphere frequently praises, but a more deliberate correspondence between individual principles and individual deeds – a honesty that resists alteration by corporate expectations. As opposed to considering authenticity as a directive to overshare or conform to sterilized models of openness, the author encourages followers to keep the elements of it rooted in honesty, self-awareness and moral understanding. In her view, the objective is not to give up on sincerity but to move it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and to interactions and organizations where reliance, fairness and responsibility make {
