Why the Concept of Authenticity in the Workplace Often Turns Into a Snare for Minority Workers
Within the opening pages of the book Authentic, writer the author issues a provocation: commonplace advice to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for individuality – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a combination of personal stories, research, cultural critique and discussions – seeks to unmask how companies co-opt identity, shifting the responsibility of institutional change on to individual workers who are already vulnerable.
Professional Experience and Wider Environment
The driving force for the work lies partially in Burey’s personal work history: different positions across business retail, emerging businesses and in global development, interpreted via her experience as a woman of color with a disability. The dual posture that Burey experiences – a push and pull between expressing one’s identity and looking for safety – is the engine of Authentic.
It emerges at a moment of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the United States and internationally, as backlash to DEI initiatives mount, and many organizations are cutting back the very structures that previously offered change and reform. The author steps into that arena to contend that retreating from corporate authenticity talk – namely, the business jargon that minimizes personal identity as a set of appearances, idiosyncrasies and pastimes, keeping workers focused on managing how they are viewed rather than how they are regarded – is not an effective response; instead, we need to redefine it on our personal terms.
Underrepresented Employees and the Act of Identity
Via detailed stories and conversations, the author demonstrates how employees from minority groups – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, female employees, people with disabilities – learn early on to calibrate which identity will “be acceptable”. A sensitive point becomes a drawback and people compensate excessively by attempting to look agreeable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a reflective surface on which various types of anticipations are cast: emotional work, sharing personal information and ongoing display of gratitude. In Burey’s words, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but without the safeguards or the reliance to survive what emerges.
As Burey explains, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but lacking the protections or the reliance to endure what emerges.’
Case Study: Jason’s Experience
The author shows this situation through the narrative of a worker, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to teach his team members about deaf culture and communication norms. His eagerness to discuss his background – a behavior of transparency the workplace often praises as “genuineness” – for a short time made everyday communications easier. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was fragile. After staff turnover eliminated the informal knowledge Jason had built, the atmosphere of inclusion vanished. “All of that knowledge departed with those employees,” he comments exhaustedly. What stayed was the weariness of needing to begin again, of being held accountable for an institution’s learning curve. From the author’s perspective, this demonstrates to be told to expose oneself lacking safeguards: to endanger oneself in a structure that celebrates your honesty but refuses to codify it into procedure. Genuineness becomes a pitfall when institutions rely on individual self-disclosure rather than organizational responsibility.
Author’s Approach and Concept of Dissent
Burey’s writing is both understandable and expressive. She blends scholarly depth with a manner of solidarity: an invitation for followers to participate, to challenge, to oppose. For Burey, workplace opposition is not noisy protest but ethical rejection – the act of resisting conformity in settings that demand thankfulness for mere inclusion. To dissent, in her framing, is to challenge the accounts organizations describe about equity and inclusion, and to reject involvement in customs that maintain inequity. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a gathering, opting out of voluntary “diversity” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s identity is offered to the institution. Opposition, the author proposes, is an assertion of personal dignity in spaces that frequently praise obedience. It is a discipline of principle rather than opposition, a way of asserting that an individual’s worth is not conditional on institutional approval.
Redefining Genuineness
The author also avoids brittle binaries. The book does not merely eliminate “sincerity” wholesale: instead, she calls for its reclamation. In Burey’s view, genuineness is not the raw display of individuality that organizational atmosphere often celebrates, but a more thoughtful correspondence between one’s values and individual deeds – an integrity that opposes distortion by institutional demands. As opposed to viewing authenticity as a requirement to overshare or adapt to cleansed standards of candor, Burey urges readers to keep the elements of it based on sincerity, self-awareness and moral understanding. From her perspective, the objective is not to abandon authenticity but to shift it – to remove it from the corporate display practices and to connections and organizations where trust, fairness and accountability make {
