How Being Authentic on the Job Can Become a Snare for Employees of Color
In the opening pages of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, writer Burey poses a challenge: everyday directives to “bring your true self” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are far from well-meaning invitations for individuality – they often become snares. This initial publication – a blend of memoir, research, societal analysis and conversations – seeks to unmask how companies appropriate personal identity, shifting the burden of institutional change on to staff members who are often marginalized.
Personal Journey and Wider Environment
The motivation for the work lies partially in the author’s professional path: various roles across corporate retail, new companies and in international development, viewed through her experience as a disabled Black female. The dual posture that the author encounters – a push and pull between standing up for oneself and looking for safety – is the engine of her work.
It arrives at a time of general weariness with institutional platitudes across America and other regions, as opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs grow, and various institutions are cutting back the very structures that previously offered progress and development. The author steps into that landscape to contend that withdrawing from authenticity rhetoric – specifically, the corporate language that reduces individuality as a set of appearances, quirks and pastimes, leaving workers concerned with managing how they are seen rather than how they are handled – is not a solution; instead, we need to reframe it on our personal terms.
Marginalized Workers and the Act of Identity
By means of detailed stories and conversations, Burey shows how employees from minority groups – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, women workers, people with disabilities – learn early on to adjust which persona will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people compensate excessively by striving to seem acceptable. The effort of “presenting your true self” becomes a projection screen on which all manner of expectations are projected: affective duties, disclosure and constant performance of thankfulness. According to Burey, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but absent the protections or the reliance to withstand what arises.
According to the author, workers are told to share our identities – but without the safeguards or the confidence to withstand what emerges.’
Case Study: Jason’s Experience
Burey demonstrates this dynamic through the account of a worker, a employee with hearing loss who took it upon himself to educate his colleagues about the culture of the deaf community and communication norms. His willingness to discuss his background – a gesture of openness the office often applauds as “authenticity” – for a short time made everyday communications more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was precarious. Once staff turnover erased the unofficial understanding Jason had built, the environment of accessibility disappeared. “Everything he taught left with them,” he comments exhaustedly. What stayed was the exhaustion of having to start over, of being held accountable for an institution’s learning curve. According to Burey, this demonstrates to be told to share personally absent defenses: to endanger oneself in a system that applauds your openness but fails to codify it into procedure. Sincerity becomes a trap when organizations depend on employee revelation rather than institutional answerability.
Author’s Approach and Notion of Opposition
The author’s prose is both clear and lyrical. She blends scholarly depth with a tone of solidarity: an offer for followers to participate, to challenge, to dissent. According to the author, workplace opposition is not overt defiance but moral resistance – the effort of opposing uniformity in workplaces that expect appreciation for simple belonging. To dissent, from her perspective, is to interrogate the stories companies narrate about fairness and inclusion, and to reject involvement in practices that maintain injustice. It could involve naming bias in a meeting, withdrawing of voluntary “equity” effort, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is offered to the institution. Resistance, the author proposes, is an affirmation of self-respect in settings that typically encourage compliance. It constitutes a habit of honesty rather than rebellion, a way of asserting that a person’s dignity is not based on corporate endorsement.
Redefining Genuineness
She also refuses inflexible opposites. The book avoids just toss out “sincerity” entirely: on the contrary, she calls for its redefinition. For Burey, sincerity is far from the raw display of personality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more thoughtful harmony between one’s values and personal behaviors – an integrity that resists manipulation by corporate expectations. As opposed to viewing genuineness as a mandate to disclose excessively or adapt to sterilized models of openness, Burey urges audience to maintain the elements of it rooted in truth-telling, personal insight and ethical clarity. In her view, the aim is not to give up on genuineness but to relocate it – to remove it from the executive theatrical customs and toward interactions and workplaces where reliance, equity and accountability make {
