The Ways the Concept of Authenticity at Work Often Turns Into a Snare for Minority Workers
Within the opening pages of the book Authentic, speaker Burey issues a provocation: commonplace injunctions to “come as you are” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are far from well-meaning invitations for individuality – they’re traps. This initial publication – a mix of memoir, investigation, societal analysis and discussions – aims to reveal how businesses take over individual identity, transferring the responsibility of institutional change on to individual workers who are frequently at risk.
Career Path and Broader Context
The driving force for the book originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: multiple jobs across business retail, emerging businesses and in global development, viewed through her perspective as a woman of color with a disability. The conflicting stance that Burey experiences – a back-and-forth between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the driving force of the book.
It lands at a period of general weariness with corporate clichés across the United States and internationally, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs increase, and many organizations are reducing the very systems that once promised change and reform. The author steps into that arena to contend that backing away from the language of authenticity – specifically, the organizational speech that minimizes personal identity as a collection of aesthetics, peculiarities and pastimes, leaving workers focused on controlling how they are perceived rather than how they are treated – is not a solution; we must instead reinterpret it on our personal terms.
Minority Staff and the Act of Identity
Through detailed stories and interviews, Burey shows how marginalized workers – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ individuals, female employees, people with disabilities – learn early on to calibrate which persona will “be acceptable”. A weakness becomes a liability and people compensate excessively by working to appear acceptable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a reflective surface on which numerous kinds of anticipations are cast: emotional work, revealing details and continuous act of gratitude. As the author states, we are asked to expose ourselves – but absent the defenses or the confidence to endure what comes out.
‘In Burey’s words, employees are requested to share our identities – but without the safeguards or the reliance to survive what comes out.’
Real-Life Example: An Employee’s Journey
Burey demonstrates this situation through the account of an employee, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to inform his co-workers about deaf culture and communication practices. His readiness to discuss his background – a gesture of openness the organization often commends as “genuineness” – for a short time made everyday communications smoother. But as Burey shows, that advancement was fragile. After personnel shifts wiped out the casual awareness the employee had developed, the environment of accessibility vanished. “All of that knowledge left with them,” he states tiredly. What was left was the fatigue of needing to begin again, of being held accountable for an company’s developmental journey. In Burey’s view, this is what it means to be told to expose oneself absent defenses: to face exposure in a structure that celebrates your openness but declines to codify it into procedure. Authenticity becomes a trap when institutions depend on employee revelation rather than structural accountability.
Writing Style and Idea of Resistance
Burey’s writing is simultaneously lucid and expressive. She combines academic thoroughness with a style of connection: a call for readers to engage, to question, to dissent. According to the author, professional resistance is not loud rebellion but ethical rejection – the act of opposing uniformity in settings that demand gratitude for basic acceptance. To resist, according to her view, is to challenge the stories institutions describe about fairness and inclusion, and to refuse engagement in practices that perpetuate unfairness. It could involve calling out discrimination in a discussion, choosing not to participate of voluntary “inclusion” effort, or establishing limits around how much of one’s identity is provided to the organization. Resistance, the author proposes, is an affirmation of individual worth in environments that typically praise compliance. It represents a habit of honesty rather than opposition, a way of insisting that a person’s dignity is not conditional on corporate endorsement.
Redefining Genuineness
She also refuses brittle binaries. Authentic does not simply eliminate “sincerity” entirely: on the contrary, she advocates for its reclamation. In Burey’s view, authenticity is not the unrestricted expression of individuality that business environment typically applauds, but a more deliberate alignment between personal beliefs and personal behaviors – an integrity that rejects distortion by corporate expectations. Rather than viewing authenticity as a requirement to reveal too much or adapt to sterilized models of candor, the author encourages followers to keep the elements of it based on sincerity, individual consciousness and moral understanding. In her view, the objective is not to give up on genuineness but to shift it – to move it out of the executive theatrical customs and into connections and offices where confidence, justice and accountability make {
