🔗 Share this article Why Being Authentic on the Job Can Become a Pitfall for Minority Workers Within the beginning sections of the book Authentic, author the author raises a critical point: everyday injunctions to “be yourself” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are far from well-meaning invitations for personal expression – they can be pitfalls. Burey’s debut book – a mix of recollections, studies, cultural critique and interviews – seeks to unmask how businesses co-opt identity, transferring the weight of institutional change on to employees who are frequently at risk. Professional Experience and Wider Environment The motivation for the publication originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: different positions across retail corporations, startups and in global development, filtered through her experience as a disabled Black female. The conflicting stance that Burey faces – a tension between asserting oneself and aiming for security – is the engine of the book. It arrives at a moment of collective fatigue with corporate clichés across the US and beyond, as backlash to DEI initiatives grow, and various institutions are reducing the very frameworks that earlier assured progress and development. Burey delves into that terrain to contend that retreating from authenticity rhetoric – specifically, the organizational speech that reduces individuality as a grouping of aesthetics, quirks and pastimes, keeping workers preoccupied with handling how they are seen rather than how they are regarded – is not an effective response; rather, we should redefine it on our personal terms. Underrepresented Employees and the Performance of Persona By means of vivid anecdotes and interviews, Burey shows how marginalized workers – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, employees with disabilities – soon understand to adjust which self will “be acceptable”. A vulnerability becomes a drawback and people try too hard by working to appear palatable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a projection screen on which all manner of expectations are projected: emotional labor, disclosure and continuous act of thankfulness. According to Burey, workers are told to expose ourselves – but without the protections or the reliance to endure what arises. According to the author, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but lacking the protections or the confidence to withstand what arises.’ Illustrative Story: An Employee’s Journey Burey demonstrates this situation through the story of a worker, a hearing-impaired staff member who chose to teach his team members about the culture of the deaf community and communication norms. His readiness to talk about his life – a behavior of openness the workplace often applauds as “genuineness” – briefly made daily interactions easier. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was precarious. Once personnel shifts wiped out the casual awareness Jason had built, the environment of accessibility dissolved with it. “Everything he taught departed with those employees,” he comments exhaustedly. What was left was the fatigue of having to start over, of being held accountable for an organization’s educational process. According to Burey, this is what it means to be asked to expose oneself lacking safeguards: to face exposure in a framework that celebrates your transparency but fails to codify it into procedure. Genuineness becomes a trap when institutions rely on individual self-disclosure rather than institutional answerability. Literary Method and Notion of Opposition The author’s prose is simultaneously understandable and poetic. She marries intellectual rigor with a tone of connection: an offer for followers to participate, to challenge, to oppose. According to the author, professional resistance is not noisy protest but principled refusal – the practice of resisting conformity in environments that demand gratitude for simple belonging. To resist, from her perspective, is to interrogate the accounts companies narrate about fairness and acceptance, and to refuse involvement in rituals that perpetuate inequity. It could involve identifying prejudice in a gathering, opting out of unpaid “diversity” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s personal life is provided to the institution. Opposition, the author proposes, is an affirmation of individual worth in spaces that typically reward compliance. It represents a discipline of principle rather than opposition, a method of insisting that an individual’s worth is not conditional on organizational acceptance. Restoring Sincerity She also refuses inflexible opposites. The book does not simply discard “authenticity” entirely: on the contrary, she advocates for its redefinition. For Burey, genuineness is far from the unfiltered performance of individuality that corporate culture typically applauds, but a more deliberate alignment between personal beliefs and individual deeds – an integrity that resists alteration by organizational requirements. Rather than viewing genuineness as a requirement to reveal too much or conform to sterilized models of candor, the author encourages audience to keep the aspects of it grounded in honesty, self-awareness and moral understanding. From her perspective, the objective is not to abandon sincerity but to shift it – to transfer it from the corporate display practices and to interactions and workplaces where reliance, fairness and accountability make {