Why Being Authentic on the Job May Transform Into a Trap for Employees of Color
Throughout the opening pages of the book Authentic, author the author poses a challenge: typical advice to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are far from well-meaning invitations for individuality – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a blend of memoir, investigation, cultural commentary and conversations – seeks to unmask how companies appropriate personal identity, shifting the weight of corporate reform on to employees who are frequently at risk.
Personal Journey and Wider Environment
The impetus for the publication originates in part in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across business retail, new companies and in global development, filtered through her background as a woman of color with a disability. The dual posture that Burey faces – a back-and-forth between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the core of Authentic.
It emerges at a moment of widespread exhaustion with corporate clichés across the US and beyond, as backlash to diversity and inclusion efforts mount, and numerous companies are reducing the very systems that previously offered transformation and improvement. The author steps into that terrain to argue that retreating from the language of authenticity – specifically, the business jargon that reduces individuality as a set of aesthetics, quirks and pastimes, leaving workers concerned with handling how they are seen rather than how they are treated – is not an effective response; instead, we need to redefine it on our personal terms.
Minority Staff and the Display of Persona
Via vivid anecdotes and discussions, Burey shows how underrepresented staff – people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, disabled individuals – learn early on to calibrate which self will “fit in”. A weakness becomes a disadvantage and people overcompensate by working to appear palatable. The effort of “presenting your true self” becomes a reflective surface on which all manner of anticipations are placed: affective duties, revealing details and constant performance of appreciation. According to Burey, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but lacking the protections or the reliance to endure what emerges.
According to the author, we are asked to share our identities – but without the safeguards or the reliance to survive what arises.’
Illustrative Story: An Employee’s Journey
The author shows this situation through the account of Jason, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to inform his team members about the culture of the deaf community and interaction standards. His willingness to share his experience – an act of openness the organization often commends as “sincerity” – briefly made routine exchanges easier. But as Burey shows, that progress was fragile. After staff turnover eliminated the informal knowledge he had established, the culture of access disappeared. “Everything he taught went away with the staff,” he states tiredly. What stayed 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 requested to share personally absent defenses: to face exposure in a framework that celebrates your openness but fails to institutionalize it into procedure. Sincerity becomes a pitfall when companies count on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.
Literary Method and Concept of Dissent
Her literary style is simultaneously clear and lyrical. She blends intellectual rigor with a manner of kinship: an offer for followers to lean in, to question, to disagree. According to the author, dissent at work is not noisy protest but moral resistance – the act of opposing uniformity in workplaces that require appreciation for simple belonging. To resist, from her perspective, is to challenge the narratives companies tell about justice and acceptance, and to reject participation in practices that maintain inequity. It may appear as identifying prejudice in a meeting, choosing not to participate of voluntary “diversity” effort, or establishing limits around how much of one’s personal life is made available to the institution. Resistance, the author proposes, is an declaration of personal dignity in spaces that often reward compliance. It is a discipline of honesty rather than defiance, a method of insisting that one’s humanity is not conditional on corporate endorsement.
Redefining Genuineness
She also refuses inflexible opposites. The book does not merely eliminate “genuineness” wholesale: rather, she urges its restoration. In Burey’s view, authenticity is not the unrestricted expression of individuality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more thoughtful harmony between one’s values and personal behaviors – a principle that rejects manipulation by corporate expectations. As opposed to considering genuineness as a directive to overshare or adapt to sterilized models of transparency, Burey urges followers to maintain the elements of it rooted in honesty, personal insight and moral understanding. From her perspective, the objective is not to give up on sincerity but to move it – to transfer it from the executive theatrical customs and toward interactions and offices where confidence, justice and accountability make {
