The Ways ‘Authenticity’ on the Job Can Become a Pitfall for People of Color

Throughout the initial chapters of the book Authentic, writer the author issues a provocation: typical injunctions to “bring your true self” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not benevolent calls for personal expression – they’re traps. This initial publication – a combination of memoir, research, cultural critique and discussions – seeks to unmask how organizations take over individual identity, shifting the weight of corporate reform on to employees who are already vulnerable.

Personal Journey and Broader Context

The driving force for the work lies partially in the author’s professional path: various roles across corporate retail, new companies and in worldwide progress, filtered through her perspective as a woman of color with a disability. The conflicting stance that the author encounters – a tension between expressing one’s identity and seeking protection – is the driving force of Authentic.

It arrives at a time of widespread exhaustion with corporate clichés across America and other regions, as resistance to DEI initiatives increase, and numerous companies are cutting back the very structures that once promised transformation and improvement. The author steps into that landscape to assert that retreating from corporate authenticity talk – namely, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a set of appearances, quirks and hobbies, keeping workers concerned with handling how they are seen rather than how they are handled – is not an effective response; instead, we need to reinterpret it on our individual conditions.

Underrepresented Employees and the Display of Self

Through colorful examples and discussions, Burey shows how employees from minority groups – people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, disabled individuals – soon understand to modulate which identity will “fit in”. A vulnerability becomes a drawback and people overcompensate by striving to seem palatable. The practice of “presenting your true self” becomes a reflective surface on which various types of assumptions are projected: affective duties, revealing details and ongoing display of gratitude. As the author states, workers are told to share our identities – but absent the safeguards or the trust to withstand what arises.

‘In Burey’s words, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but absent the defenses or the confidence to withstand what comes out.’

Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience

She illustrates this dynamic through the narrative of an employee, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to educate his co-workers about deaf culture and communication norms. His eagerness to share his experience – a behavior of transparency the workplace often applauds as “authenticity” – for a short time made routine exchanges easier. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was precarious. After personnel shifts eliminated the casual awareness the employee had developed, the culture of access dissolved with it. “Everything he taught departed with those employees,” he notes wearily. What remained was the weariness of having to start over, of having to take charge for an institution’s learning curve. According to Burey, this demonstrates to be requested to expose oneself lacking safeguards: to risk vulnerability in a system that celebrates your openness but fails to formalize it into procedure. Genuineness becomes a trap when companies depend on employee revelation rather than structural accountability.

Author’s Approach and Concept of Dissent

Burey’s writing is both lucid and lyrical. She combines scholarly depth with a style of connection: a call for readers to lean in, to question, to oppose. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not noisy protest but moral resistance – the effort of opposing uniformity in settings that require thankfulness for mere inclusion. To oppose, in her framing, is to interrogate the accounts institutions tell about justice and belonging, and to refuse participation in rituals that perpetuate unfairness. It could involve identifying prejudice in a gathering, choosing not to participate of unpaid “diversity” work, or setting boundaries around how much of oneself is provided to the company. Dissent, the author proposes, is an affirmation of individual worth in settings that typically encourage compliance. It is a practice of principle rather than rebellion, a way of asserting that an individual’s worth is not dependent on organizational acceptance.

Reclaiming Authenticity

Burey also rejects brittle binaries. The book does not simply toss out “authenticity” completely: instead, she urges its redefinition. In Burey’s view, authenticity is not the unfiltered performance of personality that organizational atmosphere often celebrates, but a more thoughtful correspondence between individual principles and one’s actions – a principle that opposes distortion by institutional demands. As opposed to treating genuineness as a directive to overshare or adapt to sterilized models of candor, the author encourages readers to keep the aspects of it grounded in truth-telling, individual consciousness and ethical clarity. In her view, the goal is not to abandon genuineness but to relocate it – to transfer it from the boardroom’s performative rituals and to connections and organizations where reliance, justice and responsibility make {