Why ‘Authenticity’ at Work May Transform Into a Snare for Minority Workers
Throughout the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, speaker the author poses a challenge: commonplace injunctions to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for individuality – they often become snares. This initial publication – a mix of memoir, studies, cultural commentary and conversations – seeks to unmask how companies appropriate personal identity, transferring the burden of organizational transformation on to individual workers who are already vulnerable.
Personal Journey and Broader Context
The impetus for the book stems partly in Burey’s own career trajectory: multiple jobs across corporate retail, emerging businesses and in international development, interpreted via her background as a woman of color with a disability. The two-fold position that the author encounters – a push and pull between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the core of Authentic.
It arrives at a period of widespread exhaustion with corporate clichés across America and other regions, as opposition to DEI initiatives mount, and many organizations are reducing the very structures that earlier assured change and reform. The author steps into that terrain to assert that backing away from corporate authenticity talk – that is, the business jargon that reduces individuality as a grouping of aesthetics, idiosyncrasies and hobbies, keeping workers focused on handling how they are perceived rather than how they are handled – is not the answer; instead, we need to redefine it on our personal terms.
Marginalized Workers and the Act of Persona
Via colorful examples and conversations, Burey illustrates how underrepresented staff – people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, disabled individuals – quickly realize to adjust which persona will “pass”. A vulnerability becomes a disadvantage and people try too hard by striving to seem palatable. The practice of “presenting your true self” becomes a projection screen on which all manner of expectations are projected: emotional labor, disclosure and constant performance of appreciation. According to Burey, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but without the protections or the trust to survive what emerges.
According to the author, workers are told to expose ourselves – but absent the defenses or the reliance to survive what arises.’
Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience
She illustrates this dynamic through the story of a worker, a employee with hearing loss who chose to teach his team members about deaf community norms and interaction standards. His willingness to discuss his background – a behavior of transparency the organization often applauds as “genuineness” – for a short time made everyday communications smoother. However, Burey points out, that progress was precarious. Once personnel shifts wiped out the unofficial understanding he had established, the culture of access vanished. “Everything he taught went away with the staff,” he comments exhaustedly. What stayed was the fatigue of having to start over, of being made responsible for an company’s developmental journey. According to Burey, this is what it means to be asked to expose oneself absent defenses: to risk vulnerability in a framework that praises your openness but refuses to formalize it into policy. Sincerity becomes a snare when institutions count on individual self-disclosure rather than institutional answerability.
Author’s Approach and Notion of Opposition
Her literary style is simultaneously lucid and expressive. She blends scholarly depth with a style of solidarity: a call for audience to participate, to challenge, to oppose. According to the author, dissent at work is not overt defiance but principled refusal – the act of rejecting sameness in environments that expect gratitude for simple belonging. To dissent, in her framing, is to challenge the accounts companies tell about fairness and inclusion, and to decline engagement in customs that sustain inequity. It could involve naming bias in a gathering, opting out of uncompensated “inclusion” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s personal life is made available to the organization. Dissent, the author proposes, is an declaration of personal dignity in spaces that typically praise obedience. It represents a discipline of integrity rather than opposition, a approach of asserting that an individual’s worth is not based on corporate endorsement.
Redefining Genuineness
Burey also rejects rigid dichotomies. Authentic does not simply eliminate “sincerity” wholesale: instead, she urges its redefinition. According to the author, sincerity is not simply the raw display of individuality that business environment typically applauds, but a more intentional alignment between one’s values and one’s actions – a principle that opposes distortion by organizational requirements. Rather than viewing sincerity as a requirement to overshare or adjust to cleansed standards of candor, Burey advises audience to maintain the aspects of it grounded in truth-telling, self-awareness and moral understanding. According to Burey, the goal is not to abandon genuineness but to move it – to transfer it from the corporate display practices and into relationships and offices where confidence, equity and accountability make {
