How ‘Authenticity’ on the Job Often Turns Into a Snare for Minority Workers

Within the beginning sections of the publication Authentic, speaker Burey poses a challenge: typical injunctions to “be yourself” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for individuality – they can be pitfalls. Her first book – a combination of recollections, investigation, cultural commentary and conversations – attempts to expose how organizations co-opt identity, shifting the responsibility of institutional change on to individual workers who are already vulnerable.

Professional Experience and Wider Environment

The motivation for the publication originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: different positions across corporate retail, startups and in global development, viewed through her background as a Black disabled woman. The conflicting stance that Burey faces – a back-and-forth between standing up for oneself and looking for safety – is the engine of Authentic.

It lands at a period of general weariness with organizational empty phrases across America and other regions, as backlash to DEI initiatives increase, and many organizations are cutting back the very structures that previously offered change and reform. Burey delves into that landscape to contend that retreating from authenticity rhetoric – namely, the organizational speech that minimizes personal identity as a grouping of surface traits, idiosyncrasies and interests, keeping workers concerned with handling how they are viewed rather than how they are handled – is not an effective response; we must instead reframe it on our own terms.

Minority Staff and the Display of Self

Through colorful examples and discussions, Burey shows how employees from minority groups – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, people with disabilities – quickly realize to modulate which persona will “fit in”. A sensitive point becomes a drawback and people compensate excessively by attempting to look acceptable. The practice of “showing your complete identity” becomes a projection screen on which all manner of expectations are projected: emotional work, revealing details and ongoing display of gratitude. According to Burey, we are asked to share our identities – but without the defenses or the reliance to survive what comes out.

According to the author, employees are requested to share our identities – but without the safeguards or the confidence to survive what emerges.’

Illustrative Story: An Employee’s Journey

She illustrates this situation through the story of Jason, a employee with hearing loss who took it upon himself to teach his team members about deaf community norms and communication practices. His readiness to share his experience – a gesture of openness the workplace often commends as “genuineness” – temporarily made routine exchanges smoother. But as Burey shows, that advancement was fragile. Once employee changes erased the informal knowledge Jason had built, the environment of accessibility dissolved with it. “All the information left with them,” he notes wearily. What remained was the weariness of needing to begin again, of being made responsible for an institution’s learning curve. According to Burey, this demonstrates to be requested to reveal oneself lacking safeguards: to risk vulnerability in a structure that applauds your transparency but refuses to formalize it into procedure. Authenticity becomes a snare when institutions rely on employee revelation rather than organizational responsibility.

Author’s Approach and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is both lucid and poetic. She blends scholarly depth with a style of solidarity: a call for audience to lean in, to interrogate, to oppose. In Burey’s opinion, professional resistance is not overt defiance but ethical rejection – the act of rejecting sameness in environments that require gratitude for basic acceptance. To dissent, from her perspective, is to question the stories organizations tell about justice and acceptance, and to reject engagement in customs that maintain inequity. It might look like calling out discrimination in a gathering, choosing not to participate of uncompensated “diversity” labor, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is offered to the organization. Dissent, Burey indicates, is an affirmation of self-respect in settings that typically encourage obedience. It is a habit of principle rather than defiance, a way of asserting that a person’s dignity is not dependent on corporate endorsement.

Reclaiming Authenticity

The author also avoids rigid dichotomies. Authentic does not simply toss out “sincerity” entirely: on the contrary, she urges its reclamation. For Burey, sincerity is not simply the unrestricted expression of individuality that business environment typically applauds, but a more deliberate alignment between personal beliefs and one’s actions – a principle that opposes distortion by organizational requirements. Instead of considering sincerity as a directive to disclose excessively or adjust to sterilized models of candor, Burey urges audience to maintain the elements of it grounded in honesty, personal insight and ethical clarity. From her perspective, the goal is not to discard genuineness but to move it – to remove it from the executive theatrical customs and into interactions and organizations where trust, fairness and answerability make {