Why ‘Authenticity’ in the Workplace May Transform Into a Trap for People of Color

In the initial chapters of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, author Burey raises a critical point: everyday directives to “come as you are” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not harmless encouragements for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. Burey’s debut book – a blend of recollections, research, cultural commentary and discussions – attempts to expose how businesses co-opt identity, shifting the responsibility of organizational transformation on to employees who are already vulnerable.

Personal Journey and Broader Context

The driving force for the publication stems partly in the author’s professional path: multiple jobs across business retail, emerging businesses and in global development, filtered through her experience as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that Burey faces – a tension between expressing one’s identity and seeking protection – is the driving force of her work.

It emerges at a period of collective fatigue with organizational empty phrases across America and other regions, as opposition to DEI initiatives grow, and numerous companies are cutting back the very structures that earlier assured progress and development. Burey delves into that arena to argue that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – namely, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a grouping of surface traits, peculiarities and hobbies, keeping workers focused on handling how they are perceived rather than how they are handled – is not a solution; rather, we should reinterpret it on our own terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Display of Identity

Through vivid anecdotes and interviews, the author demonstrates how marginalized workers – employees from diverse backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women workers, employees with disabilities – learn early on to adjust which self will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people try too hard by striving to seem agreeable. The effort of “bringing your full self” becomes a display surface on which all manner of expectations are projected: affective duties, sharing personal information and constant performance of appreciation. According to Burey, workers are told to expose ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the confidence to survive what comes out.

According to the author, employees are requested to share our identities – but without the protections or the trust to survive what comes out.’

Real-Life Example: Jason’s Experience

She illustrates this phenomenon through the account of a worker, a deaf employee who chose to teach his colleagues about deaf culture and communication practices. His eagerness to discuss his background – an act of transparency the workplace often commends as “authenticity” – for a short time made everyday communications more manageable. But as Burey shows, that improvement was precarious. When employee changes wiped out the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the atmosphere of inclusion disappeared. “All the information went away with the staff,” he states tiredly. What was left was the fatigue of having to start over, of being held accountable for an organization’s educational process. In Burey’s view, this illustrates to be told to reveal oneself without protection: to face exposure in a framework that celebrates your honesty but refuses to codify it into regulation. Genuineness becomes a pitfall when institutions rely on employee revelation rather than structural accountability.

Author’s Approach and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is at once lucid and poetic. She marries scholarly depth with a manner of kinship: an invitation for audience to engage, to challenge, to dissent. According to the author, workplace opposition is not noisy protest but principled refusal – the practice of rejecting sameness in environments that expect thankfulness for mere inclusion. To resist, according to her view, is to challenge the accounts institutions tell about fairness and belonging, and to reject engagement in practices that maintain unfairness. It might look like calling out discrimination in a discussion, choosing not to participate of unpaid “equity” work, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s personal life is offered to the company. Opposition, she suggests, is an assertion of self-respect in environments that often praise conformity. It is a practice of integrity rather than rebellion, a approach of maintaining that a person’s dignity is not dependent on organizational acceptance.

Reclaiming Authenticity

Burey also rejects brittle binaries. Her work does not simply discard “sincerity” completely: on the contrary, she urges its redefinition. According to the author, sincerity is far from the unfiltered performance of individuality that organizational atmosphere often celebrates, but a more intentional harmony between one’s values and personal behaviors – a honesty that rejects distortion by corporate expectations. Instead of treating authenticity as a directive to overshare or adapt to sanitized ideals of candor, the author encourages readers to keep the elements of it based on truth-telling, personal insight and moral understanding. From her perspective, the aim is not to discard genuineness but to relocate it – to move it out of the corporate display practices and toward relationships and organizations where confidence, fairness and responsibility make {